The Jets have been swamped with calls from developers and investors looking to become partners in building a stadium over the Hudson Rail Yards, real estate insiders familiar with the situation said yesterday. If the stadium is built, however, it might be unsuitable for the Olympic Summer Games in 2012.

“People are coming out of the woodwork,” a Jets official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The New York Sun.

“I’ve heard that some of my members have called the Jets,” the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, said. He declined to say which of his members might be interested.

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the 13-acre rail yards, awarded the Jets development rights in March for a bid of $250 million. The team planned to build a 75,000-seat stadium on a platform over the rail yards, which are operating. The plan was dealt what many thought was a mortal blow Monday when a little-known state board did not approve a $300 million state contribution to the stadium, formally known as the New York Sports and Convention Center. The Public Authorities Control Board, controlled by Governor Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, needed a 3-0 vote to approve the development, which was denied when the two legislative leaders instructed their representatives to abstain.

Supporters of the stadium are now considering obtaining approval for the $2 billion-plus project through city government instead. The rail yards would have to be rezoned to allow construction of the stadium, which could be completed through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process, under which the community board, the Manhattan borough president’s office, the City Planning Commission, and the City Council would all review the proposal.

Mr. Spinola said the process could be completed in four to seven months, instead of the 12 months usually required, because the Jets have already completed an environmental impact statement for the stadium.

Getting the stadium approved through the city process “is an option that needs to be considered,” the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, said yesterday.

Approval by the City Planning Commission and a majority of the 51-member City Council is considered likely, though both the council speaker, Gifford Miller, and the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, who are candidates for the Democratic nomination for mayor, have opposed the stadium proposal rejected in Albany this week. The community board also opposes the project but lacks the authority to veto it.

“City approval is a definite possibility,” the chairman of the council’s finance committee, David Weprin, said.

“If it goes through Ulurp, I think it will pass,” the Queens Democrat said of the city’s review process.

Then, presumably, the proposed stadium and convention center could still benefit from a $300 million city subsidy for construction of the immense platform on which it would be built. The Jets’ problem is that approval through the city process would not qualify the stadium for the $300 million in state money and the millions of dollars in state tax breaks that the Jets expected to receive if the control board approved their plan.

“If they don’t need the $300 million from the state, then why didn’t they say so last week?” the executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, Frank Mauro, asked yesterday. “It sounds ridiculous to me that now the Jets say they can get private financing, when all along they said they had to have the subsidies.”

The likely scenario, the Jets official said, would be that the $300 million retractable roof originally planned for the waterfront stadium would be replaced by a significantly cheaper roof that was not retractable.

A retractable roof would have allowed conversion of the football stadium and convention venue into an Olympic stadium, but because it now seems unlikely New York City will be selected as host of the 2012 Olympics, the retractable roof is no longer seen as critical.

The cost to the Jets of building the stadium would also be held in check by the participation of private investors.

One developer reached by The New York Sun said he had considered calling the Jets to help them cover the more than $300 million in lost state subsidies but decided against the move because it was not a real estate play.

“We thought to ourselves that this whole thing is falling apart because of a lousy $300 million, can’t we think of a way to save it?” the developer, who declined to be quoted by name, said. “I’m sure every developer in town had that thought, but we’re not interested in getting into a sports investment.”

The only way an investment in the Jets would be profitable for real estate investors, that developer said, is if the MTA awarded priority to investors in the purchase of the valuable “transferable development rights” that would be created by a rezoning. When the Jets submitted their winning bid three months ago, a half dozen developers joined in the bid. Given a rezoning of the rail yards, those developers – Brodsky Organization, Glenwood Management, Rockrose Realty, Donald Zucker Company, the Related Companies, and Jack Resnick & Sons – planned to use those excess air rights to construct taller buildings elsewhere.

At the time, the MTA decided to retain ownership of the desirable TDRs, as they are known, with an eye toward eventually selling them to raise money – which it desperately needs to maintain and expand the mass-transit system.

A call to the MTA yesterday was not returned.