Bronx President Details Yankee Stadium Plan
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The Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrion, yesterday announced a plan to use Yankee Stadium for Little League games and a Yankee Hall of Fame and Museum.
The proposal, first reported by The New York Sun, would depend on the team following through with its plan to build a new $750 million baseball stadium across the street from the current stadium, at Macombs Dam Park.
Mr. Carrion also envisions a 250-room hotel and conference center, a sports and fitness center, and a high school for sports-industry careers at the site of the current stadium. He estimated his Yankee Stadium Neighborhood Development Plan would cost $1.5 billion to $2 billion, with about $400 million of the financing coming from taxpayer funds.
“It is hard to give exact figures because the new stadium, the hall of fame, the hotel, and the fitness center will be privately financed,” Mr. Carrion said. The funding for the high school would come from the Department of Education; it would cost between $50 million and $70 million, he said. Mr. Carrion said he expects the project to be “near completion” by 2008 or 2009.
Mr. Carrion announced details of the plan, which also includes a new Metro-North station and two renovated subway stations – across the street from the hotel and at 149th Street and the Grand Concourse – at a breakfast hosted by the Association for a Better New York. The plan also envisions a ferry within walking distance of the stadium, three new buildings with roughly a million square feet of retail space, and a fourth building with 2,500 parking spaces. There would be a one-acre public park along the Harlem River and a pedestrian greenway connecting the new stadium with the Harlem River waterfront.
While Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said he liked certain aspects of Mr. Carrion’s plan, preserving the outer walls of the current Yankee Stadium would be a problem, he said. “It is too much bulk to have two stadiums side by side; it will create too much shadow,” he told The New York Sun.
“I still have to be convinced a hotel would be viable,” Rep. Jose Serrano, who represents the district, said of the plan. “Who would stay there when the Yankees are not playing, considering they only play 81 days a year?”
Mr. Carrion said this was the first time the Yankees had seen his proposal in full. The Yankees have their own plan, which includes a $750 million new stadium at Macombs Dam Park. The stadium would include 51,000 seats and up to 75 luxury boxes designed to evoke the style of the original Yankees Stadium built in 1923.
To build the stadium at Macombs Dam Park would require taking nearly half of the park’s 28.4 acres and an additional 2.9 acres in John Mullaly Park, with a number of ball fields, tennis and handball courts, a running track, and a soccer field being demolished.
To remove a city park, the state Legislature must approve the measure, and in exchange, a park of equal size must be built in the same community. This means the Yankees and the city and state must locate a new park in the same South Bronx neighborhood and fund its creation, and the move must be approved by the state Legislature.