From the Daily News:City officials are scampering to sign a deal by the end of this month for $300 million in tax-free bonds that would allow the Yankees and a royal from the United Arab Emirates to tear down one of the bankrupt Yankee Stadium garages and build a Major League Soccer stadium, two sources close to the talks have told the Daily News.
A draft of the agreement circulating among Economic Development Corp. staff would require Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio to decide within 30 days of his inauguration whether to approve the deal for the new soccer franchise, the New York City Football Club, the sources said.
Under the complex proposal, the new soccer team — a joint venture of the Yankees and Manchester City Football Club, a British team owned by Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan — would pay virtually no rent for 38 years for the largely city-owned land on which the proposed 28,000-seat soccer venue would sit.
The new franchise would also be permitted to divert the property taxes it would normally owe the city to pay off its bonds, the sources said — a deal similar to the one the Yankees and the Mets got for their new stadiums in 2005. The soccer club would be exempt from sales taxes or mortgage taxes.
The soccer venture would pay an estimated $25 million to bondholders of the bankrupt Bronx Parking Development firm for its E. 153rd St. garage, which sits on city-owned land. In addition, Yankees President Randy Levine is trying to buy out and relocate a nearby elevator equipment company, GAL Manufacturing Corp., which employs more than 350 workers.
Bill DeBlasio is not very enthusiastic about the stadium.
10 comments:
Hold your breath, folks. This will be a good early indicator the relationship between new mayor and the NYCEDC. I await the outcome.
At least forty years ago, "some people" said that soccer would be the next big thing in the United States. It didn't happen.
It was said again about thirty years ago. It didn't happen.
And again about twenty years ago. It didn't happen.
It still hasn't happened. At this point it seems highly unlikely that it will ever happen.
Why not? Probably because this country is already thoroughly dominated by well-established, very profitable team sports - football, basketball, baseball.
Does this leave room for soccer?
No? Okay, then let's stop with this nonsense of having taxpayers finance stadiums, please.
Queens to Bronx: It's your fight now.
NO SOCCER IN NY!
At least forty years ago, "some people" said that soccer would be the next big thing in the United States. It didn't happen.
If you look at the tastes of the fastest growing populations, often through immigration, soccer may very well indeed be the next big thing. Just because it will be a slow process doesn't mean it won't happen.
Just give this bullshit of soccer up, it has not cut it here in the USA for decades, it is not going to change its mind when we have football, baseball and basketball. Give it a fucking rest.
Have to approve the stadium, of course. Soccer is the sport of all the new democratic voters!
"If you look at the tastes of the fastest growing populations, often through immigration, soccer may very well indeed be the next big thing. Just because it will be a slow process doesn't mean it won't happen."
With each subsequent generation in this country, for better or worse, immigrants tend to become more interested in what is already dominant in the culture. Things can shift and things can head in new directions but it would take the equivalent of a cultural earthquake to make soccer into a profitable team sport in the US.
I just don't see football, basketball or baseball making room for it. By the time a child reaches adulthood, if he/she is interested in team sports the child has already been thoroughly immersed in what is omnipresent here.
If built, the stadium will quickly become a white elephant. Then somebody will get the idea to use it to lure the Giants or Jets back here.
Perhaps that was the real plan all along...
Still, my tax dollars shouldn't pay for it.
What's with the headline? Are those parking lots/elevator parts company/street mapped parkland? Article makes no mention of that. Soccer stadium beats an empty/bankrupt parking garage.
The parking lot is on mapped parkland. In fact, parkland here was already lost when the new stadium was built. Wake up, folks.
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