Now that the city’s experience of baseball’s All-Star Game has come and gone, is New York in a position to host a future NBA or NHL All-Star Game in Brooklyn or Manhattan? If you take Mayor Bloomberg at his word, a new arena in Brooklyn for Bruce Ratner’s Nets is a go. But Cablevision’s James Dolan is not playing ball with the city. In March, a spokesman for Madison Square Garden, Barry Watkins, announced that the Garden would undergo a renovation of its existing building — instead of incorporating itself with the planned Moynihan Station Project on Eighth Avenue, right across the street.

Ratner claims the Brooklyn rail yards arena will open sometime in 2010. Originally, Ratner planned to have the building operating in 2006. The project has been delayed by lawsuits and the current economic slowdown, though. If Ratner is able to start construction by the end of the calendar year, there is a chance that his building might be ready for the 2010-11 basketball season.

Ratner has pushed the Nets’ move, but the building will also be capable of housing an NHL team. He has never made a public statement about housing an NHL team in his arena — but he’s also never denied an interest in obtaining a hockey team, either.

“The development in Brooklyn is going ahead,” Bloomberg said in an interview Monday. “I think, given the economy, some of the construction will be a little bit slower. But the arena is going to get done on time, and the New Jersey team is going to move over there.

“I think it is going to be great for Brooklyn,” he continued. “Brooklyn is a sports borough if there ever was one. If you take a look at the new Shea Stadium, the design is based on Ebbets Field. It is really a continuation of the sports legacy that New York has had.”

Bloomberg seems very certain that Ratner will be able to pull enough funding to build an arena, which is now estimated to have a $950 million price tag. In January 2007, Barclays Bank, a British business with no branches in America, worked out an estimated $400 million, 20-year naming rights agreement with Ratner for the Brooklyn facility. In May 2008, Ratner signed six companies — Anheuser-Busch, Cushman & Wakefield, MGM Grand/Foxwoods, ADT, EmblemHealth, and Izod — as founding sponsors for the building, which will add about $100 million to Ratner’s holdings. That leaves Ratner about $450 million short if he is depending on corporate sponsors to underwrite the building. In the meantime, Ratner is retooling his team and may go after Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James in 2010, when the NBA’s most recognizable name becomes a free agent.

Bloomberg said he thinks sports “should stand on its own” and “can stand on its owner” when it comes to owners such as the Steinbrenner family in the Bronx footing the bill for a new Yankee Stadium, Ratner in Brooklyn, and the Wilpon family in Queens picking up the tab for a new Mets ballpark. But the city (and state) is still heavily subsidizing the two new baseball parks and the Brooklyn arena with significant tax breaks, tax incentives, and funding for infrastructure (Bloomberg declined to comment on city subsidies). It remains to be seen if Bloomberg can work out a similar deal with the Dolan family to move Madison Square Garden into the proposed Moynihan Station, or if the city will provide subsidies to rebuild the 40-year-old Garden. In March, the Dolans decided to give the Garden yet another renovation in an attempt to bring the old building into the 21st century. The planned renovation seems to have put a big dent in the city’s plans to renovate the Farley Post Office grounds, which would include a new train station.

“Moynihan Station, we are working on it,” Bloomberg said. “It is obviously very difficult given that there are a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of different agencies at the federal, state, and city levels, and we have a slowing economy. That is going to hurt every development.

“The Dolans, you know I haven’t been negotiating with them,” he clarified. “It is a private deal and the city’s [Economic Development Corporation] has been talking to them. Hopefully the Dolans will continue to support sports here in New York City, and if we can find a ways to get a new Madison Square Garden, I think it would be great for everyone. But if there is no way to do that, there are alternatives.”

The Dolans have not cooperated with the city, and led a campaign against the construction of the proposed New York Jets/Olympic Stadium over the rail yards between Eleventh and Twelfth avenues and 32nd and 34th streets. That stadium might have been able to hold concerts (the Garden has concerts both in the main arena, the WaMu theater, and at Radio City Music Hall), along with the NFL Draft and the NCAA Final Four. The Dolans may not have wanted to compete with a new arena — one that may have provided easy access to stage set-up and breakdown, compared to the Garden, where all events are five flights up and require some heavy lifting.

The Dolans are the last in line to get city and state monies for building and renovation. Under Mayor Dinkins, the city worked out a deal with the United States Tennis Association, in which the city gave the tennis association land in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, along with a 99-year lease. The USTA paid $172 million to build new facilities. The city worked similar deals with the ownerships of the Mets and Yankees.

“The city is so big, and it is sports-crazy, in a nice way,” Bloomberg said. “We support a lot of teams. I think these organizations will do well in their privately financed stadiums.”

MLB’s All-Star Game has come and gone. But the stadium and arena game in New York is not coming to an end anytime soon.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com