Javits Scaleback Leads Mayor To Criticize Stadium Opponents

With plans for a major expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center now dead, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday leveled harsh criticism at opponents of his defeated West Side stadium plan, saying the city would have solved its convention space problem had it been adopted.

"If a handful of people hadn't been so selfish, we could have had a privately paid for, wonderful, big convention center that would have created opportunities for lots of people in this city who otherwise can't find jobs," the mayor said.

Aiming to win the right to host the 2012 Olympics, Mr. Bloomberg advocated the construction of a football stadium on the West Side that would have doubled as a convention center. While the stadium failed to move forward, the state Legislature approved a more modest, $1.8 billion expansion of the Javits Center in 2005.

At a public hearing yesterday, state officials testified that the plan would have cost as much as $3 billion more than the 2005 estimate, and that the money would have to be diverted to repairing the decrepit center instead.

The downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corp., Patrick Foye, estimated that repairing the center, which suffers from damage to its roof and curtain wall, would cost some $850 million, leaving money for a maximum of about 60,000 square feet of additional exhibition space. The original plan would have added some 340,000 square feet.

In response to the original project's bloated cost, Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said he considered demolishing the Javits Center and building a new convention center on the Hudson Rail Yards, but determined the new center would cost far too much.