Mayor Bloomberg predicted yesterday that the city would clear its final hurdle and win approval to build a football stadium for the New York Jets on the Manhattan’s West Side, despite signs from two key Albany lawmakers that it will not be that easy.

The mayor, who has made the stadium the anchor of the city’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, said waiting to act until July 6, the day the International Olympic Committee decides whether to grant New York the games, would be “much too late.”

“The time frame is now,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters yesterday during a news conference at Washington Heights.

From the outset, Mr. Bloomberg has advanced the idea that the city has to adhere to a do-or-die timeline for approving the stadium in order to win the Olympics. The two state legislators he has to convince, however, do not see it that way.

Though the mayor has locked up Governor Pataki’s support for the arena, the state’s Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, seem unfazed by Mr. Bloomberg’s desired timeline and have expressed hesitation about taking up the issue right away.

Yesterday, during an interview on the sports radio station WFAN, Mr. Silver made it clear that he was nowhere near casting a vote in favor of the stadium. In one of his harshest assessments of the stadium, the Assembly speaker cited a laundry list of concerns, including the potential that it would lure tenants away from attempts to revitalize Lower Manhattan.

“You can build it in Queens without half the headaches of the West Side of Manhattan,” Mr. Silver said on the station’s afternoon program, “Mike and the Mad Dog.”

“I don’t believe that people sitting in London and Paris and all over Europe care whether that stadium is on the West Side, whether it’s in the Bronx, whether it’s in Staten Island,” he said. “They just care that there are facilities built.”

Both Messrs. Bruno and Silver have also expressed concern this week about a lawsuit filed by Cablevision, the owner of Madison Square Garden. The company, which fears competition from another Manhattan arena, charged in court that a decision by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarding the Jets the right to build on its West Side site was rigged.

Mr. Bloomberg has been careful to publicly laud the three state leaders – Messrs. Pataki, Bruno, and Silver – who together control the votes on the Public Authorities Control Board, the body that will ultimately decide the fate of the Jets arena. The mayor’s optimistic remarks yesterday stood in sharp contrast to Mr. Silver’s harsh characterization.

“I believe that the PACB will go ahead and approve this project because I think the governor, the majority leader, and the speaker will be convinced that this is in the city’s and New York State’s interest to go ahead and start the West Side development that will otherwise take place,” the mayor said.

Mr. Bloomberg said he had not had any discussions with the three state leaders about when the PACB would vote on the stadium, but he noted that “Joe, George, and Shelly have come through for this city before, and it’s incumbent on me to convince them that this is the right project for the city.”

Political observers said the governor and the mayor are going to have to craft a sweet deal to win over both Messrs. Silver and Bruno.

Mr. Bruno, a Republican from Rensselaer County, is going to want something significant for his upstate constituents in exchange for the $300 million in state money that Albany would have to kick in to the stadium project, they said.

Mr. Silver, who is known for keeping his position close to the vest during negotiations, has been lobbying for a subway line along Second Avenue and wants to see tenants committed to moving into Lower Manhattan before they occupy the West Side. As the only Democrat among the Republican governor, mayor, and majority leader, he is expected to be the toughest to convince.

“Shelly wants to get the best deal for him, for his constituents, and for his conference, in that order,” said a professor of political science at Baruch College, Doug Muzzio. “He’s raising the ante. He’s playing hard to get. The more he plays hard to get, the more important it is that they make him a deal he can’t refuse.”

The executive director of the nonprofit group Citizens Union, Richard Dadey, said the mayor’s approach to the stadium has always been to “exude a great deal of confidence.”

His prediction about the Public Authorities Control Board was no different.

“It’s consistent with his long-standing approach to present this as an inevitable result,” Mr. Dadey said during a phone interview. “You can’t fault the mayor for not being supremely confident about a project that he totally supports.”

Before the PACB touches the issue, the Empire State Development Corporation must approve the project. However, the corporation is run by political appointees of Mr. Pataki’s and is expected to rubber-stamp the project sometime later this month.

Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that the PACB, which was created in 1976 in response to growing public debt, could vote anytime even with a pending lawsuit.

Mr. Silver said he believed the Cablevision lawsuit would slow things down.