The Kind Of Financial Steward It Takes To Pull The City Out Of A Recession

More Bloomberg legacy:

Days after taking office in 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg killed Rudolph W. Giuliani’s plan to spend $800 million in city funds to build baseball stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets, saying they were too expensive during a recession.

Three years later, Mr. Bloomberg unveiled his own plan calling for the two teams to pay the construction costs of their new stadiums, while the city would build public parks, parking garages and transit stations nearby. The cost to taxpayers, the mayor suggested, would be relatively small and the benefits to the city would be great.

“We don’t do subsidies,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the time. “The city is getting paid back at a profit.”

But as the two stadiums near completion, the cost to taxpayers is anything but small, a review of the projects shows. Though the teams are indeed paying approximately $2 billion to erect the two stadiums, the cost to the city for infrastructure — parks, garages and transportation improvements — have jumped to about $458 million, from $281 million in 2005. The state is contributing an additional $201 million.

Those totals do not include an estimated $480 million in city, state and federal tax breaks granted to both teams. In addition, neither team has to pay rent or property taxes, though they are playing on city-owned land.

. . .

Shortly before he stepped down, Mr. Giuliani signed a nonbinding agreement with the Yankees and the Mets to pay half of he $1.6 billion cost of building two baseball stadiums. Mr. Bloomberg rejected that plan in 2002, but his own push to build a heavily subsidized football stadium for the Jets on the West Side also ended in failure.

Finally, in 2005 and 2006, the city and the state reached deals with the Yankees and Mets in which the teams agreed to pay the cost of constructing the stadiums on city-owned land, while Mr. Bloomberg insisted that the government would build only infrastructure around them.

In those early stages, city, state and team officials estimated that the Yankees project would cost about $1 billion, with the team paying 80 percent, or $800 million, for the stadium, while the city and state would contribute $208.6 million for parks and garages.

The total cost of the Mets’ project was put at almost $645 million, with the team paying about 65 percent, or $423 million, for the stadium and the public putting up $221.8 million in site preparation, pilings and mass transit improvements. The deal also allowed the Mets to keep revenue generated by the garages, money that in the past went into the city’s coffers.

In the world of stadium building, these were considered relatively good deals even by critics of public financing of private stadiums. By comparison, San Diego paid 67 percent, or $303 million, of the $449 million cost of a new stadium for the Padres that opened in 2004.

But in the past two years, the costs of the New York projects — the stadiums and the related infrastructure — have swelled substantially, with the current cost of the Mets’ project put at about $900 million and the Yankees project expected to be more than $1.7 billion, making it the most expensive ballpark in the country. The rising price tags mean public costs have grown as well.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium, Citi Field.