The president of the New York Jets, Jay Cross, unveiled a scaled-down version of the stadium he hopes will be the future home of the football team as well as the centerpiece in the city’s bid to secure the 2012 Olympics.

The new design of the New York Sports and Convention Center, which could cost as much as $1.4 billion, is a decided shift from the bulky, monument-sized building proposed last year, which would have hovered over the lowlying buildings on the far West Side of Manhattan. Like the George Washington Bridge and the warehouses whose trusses were its designers’ inspiration, the original design looked to industry and the river for its inspiration, the lead architect, William Pedersen, said.

The new design is an about-face. The entrance will face its neighbors in the east. Mr. Pedersen referred to that shift as creating a “civic dialogue” with the community that surrounds it. The words used yesterday to describe the new design – “airy,” “light,” “diaphanous” – reflect the architects’ covering the building with a “veil” of glass and lighting that will come no closer to the ground than 15 feet, allowing an overhang that will create more sidewalk room.

In contrast to the older design, the new version is smaller and intimate, though Mr. Cross said it was not driven by critics of the proposed stadium.

“We listened to the community, but it’s not like they’ve engaged us,” Mr. Cross told reporters after the introduction of the new design, an event held at the Center for Architecture near New York University. “If they want to sit down and talk to us about it, we would certainly have invited them to the table to discuss it. We redesigned it because we think it’s a better design.”

Still, the design makes clear that criticisms of the original design from the community, which had said the first building dominated the low-lying landscape, were heeded.

The new building will not include the original wind turbines, which its designers said would have produced 60% of the stadium’s energy for football games. That, along with other changes, reduces the height of the building from 306 feet to 190 feet.

A sidewalk surrounding the building, which would sit on a platform over the Metropolitan Transit Authority rail yards between Eleventh and Twelfth avenues and 30th and 33rd streets, will be 30 feet wide, twice its original width, emphasizing walking and shopping on the street level.

The shift in design is also marked by a change at the building’s main entrance, to 32nd and Eleventh from the northern end, though on game days the north and south ends of the building will be open as well. The new entrance will face the community.

Most notably, the building will face its architectural opposite in the Farley post office on Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street. Built in 1911, it is a solid, stone columned building created when buildings were meant to be monuments. The Sports and Convention Center will be of similar height but will weigh less heavily on the landscape, Mr. Pedersen said.

Asked if light and airy boded well for a stadium meant to be a home to a National Football League team, Mr. Cross took the Jets’ running back as his inspiration. “If you watch Curtis Martin run, he’s pretty delicate sometimes,” Mr. Cross said. “I don’t think the terms are mutually exclusive.”