Mayor Assures IOC of Stadium Deal
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

In a bid to quell fears that the embattled Olympic Stadium plan may not be realized, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki presented the proposal to the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission yesterday. At the Peter White Studio on West 26th Street, an art gallery with walls of windows overlooking the Hudson River and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yards, the commission members ate lunch and heard assurances that a deal for the stadium would be clinched before the Olympic committee votes for a host city July 6.
“The Mayor and Governor have expressed confidence to the commission that they would get approval for the stadium before the IOC vote,” the executive director of NYC2012, Jay Kriegel, said at a press briefing.
The city was in negotiations with the Jets for a year to build a stadium, to be officially known as the New York Sports and Convention Center, over the MTA rail yards on the West Side. In a surprise move, Madison Square Garden, which is owned by Cablevision, bid $600 million for the right to develop the land several weeks ago. The MTA has since opened the development rights at the rail yards to competitive bidding. A third offer for $700 million was made Monday.
Mr. Kriegel would not say what specific questions the commission asked, except to say they were “very technical questions about the plan.” He said the commission members did not inquire about how the city planned to succeed with the Jets plan considering the competitive bidding now being conducted. The commission members did not ask about a backup plan if the Jets stadium plan fails, Mr. Kriegel said.
The Olympic committee asks for an Olympic bid that includes charts, diagrams, and other specifics, and “a backup plan is not one of the things they asked for,” Mr. Kriegel said.
“One hundred and fifty years ago people were saying Central Park couldn’t be built … and now none of us could envision New York without it,” Mr. Kriegel said. “It was the same with Lincoln Center 50 years ago.” And it is the same with the Jets stadium today, he said.
In addition to the stadium site, the commission visited Madison Square Garden and seven other venues around the city during a grueling, all-day bus tour.
At the Garden, commission members shot hoops with the former senator and basketball star Bill Bradley, who was a gold medalist at the 1964 Olympic games.
Mr. Kriegel rebuffed any suggestion it was uncomfortable to bring the commission to the Garden, considering its owner’s stance on the Jets stadium.
“As we’ve said from the very beginning of the bid, the Garden has participated actively in the bid … we have a close working relationship,” he said.
A senior vice president at the Garden, Joel Fisher, presented the commission with the Olympic plan for the venue.
The commission also visited the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow Park and a model apartment for the proposed Olympic Village, also in Queens. Politicians who visited the commission while on its rounds included Borough Presidents Helen Marshall of Queens and C. Virginia Fields of Manhattan and Rep. Gregory Meeks, Democrat of Queens.
“No day is more important than today,” Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said yesterday evening at a press briefing. While the bid had been shown to Olympics authorities only on paper, it was brought to life yesterday as the commission saw “how the New York games would actually work on the New York streets,” Mr. Doctoroff said.
The deputy mayor also told the press that while the governor was with the commission, he informed them that his mother-in-law grew up in Morocco, the homeland of the commission’s chairwoman, Nawal el Moutawakel.
Today, the commission is scheduled to discuss the finances of the New York bid. According to the NYC2012 bid book, the Olympics would generate an estimated $3 billion in total revenue, with an operating budget of $2.8 billion.