Jets Release Design Plan For Stadium Conversion

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The New York Sun

The Jets released renderings yesterday that illustrated how their proposed stadium would be converted into an Olympic configuration with a running track around the football field and an additional 5,000 seats.


The New York Sports and Convention Center, as it is known, is to double as the Olympic stadium for track and field events and the opening and closing ceremonies, should New York be chosen to host the 2012 Games when the International Olympic Committee votes on a host city in Singapore in July. The stadium’s primary uses would be as a home for the New York Jets football team and additional convention space to complement the neighboring Jacob K. Javits Center.


To pay for the stadium, the football team has offered $800 million, with another $600 million to be provided by the city and the state to build a platform over the West Side rail yards and a retractable roof. The building would be configured as a football stadium from the time it opens in 2009 through 2011, and then would be expanded by 186 feet for Olympic use until the conclusion of the Summer Games in 2012.


The Olympic configuration would fit with the redesigned Jets stadium that the sports team released two weeks ago. The smaller, sleeker stadium is 40% shorter than the original plan, a reduction that was achieved by removing 36 wind turbines and a 50-foot steel structure to hold them in place atop the stadium.


The Olympic stadium renderings were unveiled at the annual meeting for NYC & Co., the city tourism association. There, the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, outlined the secret-ballot voting process that members of the International Olympic Committee will use July 6 in Singapore.


The voting will be conducted in quick electronic rounds until one city gets a majority. The other finalists are London, Paris, Moscow, and Madrid. Members from countries that have candidates in the running cannot vote, and, with three representatives from America, three from Spain, and so on, there will be only about 105 IOC members eligible to vote in the first round, Mr. Doctoroff said.


It is very difficult to predict how the voting will proceed, Mr. Doctoroff said, noting that for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Beijing was the leader in the first three rounds. It was not until the fourth and final round that Sydney won out.


“It is very complicated, and the thing that matters is how you pick up votes in subsequent rounds, not who wins in the first rounds,” the deputy mayor said.


For the 2010 Winter Games, “no one had ever heard of Pyeongchang, South Korea,” Mr. Doctoroff said. Its competition was Vancouver, Canada, and Salzburg, Austria. At the end of the first round, Pyeongchang was leading and Salzburg was eliminated. In the next round, Vancouver won by 56% to 53% and took the prize.


For the 2012 Olympics, Mr. Doctoroff said New York has a number of advantages. Most important, all four of its competitors are from Europe, which gives New York an edge with countries that harbor aspirations of being selected as host of the Olympics in 2016 or 2020. Italy, for example, has hopes for Milan, and Germany hopes Berlin will be selected. If Europe is chosen for the 2012 Games, it is unlikely the Olympics would return to Europe until 2024, Mr. Doctoroff said.


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