Neil deMause

So while up in the Bronx the other day, I was looking at the Yankees’ side-by-side old and new stadiums, and realized one needed to go soon to make way for public parks to replace those destroyed by the new construction. Then it occurred to me…

This whole building a new stadium thing just isn’t going the way Yankees execs had planned it. Instead of celebrating the opening of the $1.3 billion palace this has turned into the winter of the Yanks’ discontent.

First, the final season of the old Yankee Stadium was ruined when the team missed the playoffs. Then, Assembly member Richard Brodsky spoiled team officials’ offseason by continually subpoenaing them about what he called “Soviet-style” tactics in getting city money for the project…. [read more]

NOTE: This op-ed got sliced by about 20% as part of Metro’s continuing efforts to be sensitive to those with limited attention spans. You can read the original version here.

Also, Metro did a web redesign, so it’s only the headline that makes it look like I’m going to be filling in at third base for A-Rod.

After a three-week hiatus, I make my return to the Metro op-ed page with a discussion of how a poorly thought out rent law is forcing people out of their homes:

On a recent trip to my local coffee shop, I had an unexpectedly long wait for my chai. The reason: The woman ahead of me on line was bawling, gasping out her story to the sympathetic barista. She’d just been told, she sobbed, that her landlord was unexpectedly raising her rent, and she and her family were being evicted. The woman behind me chimed in: The exact same thing had happened to her a few months ago, she said… [read more]

NOTE: I’ll be appearing in Metro every other Monday from now on, as a weekly filing deadline was proving too much amid all my other projects. Also, I see that Metro has finally redesigned its website, albeit in a way that now all that appears above the fold is a giant picture of my head. Baby steps, I guess…

The Congressional Democrats’ plan to boost food stamp spending as part of an economic stimulus bill is a giant step in the right direction. But two steps would be so much more valuable:

As soon as I heard that the economic stimulus bill proposed by Congress includes $20 billion in added spending for food stamps, I knew I had to call Joel Berg for his reaction.

To say that Berg has made hunger his obsession is an insult to obsessiveness. A former food stamp official under Clinton, he now runs the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, and penned “All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?,” which documents how the U.S. has systematically underfunded its food programs. “Even I’m finally willing to concede $20 billion is pretty good,” Berg told me… [read more]

With hearings and a vote coming up this week on the latest round of Yanks and Mets stadium subsidies, I provide a stadium shenanigans FAQ:

This will be, with any luck, the last time I have to write about Yankee Stadium finance in this space. This Thursday at 10 a.m. at 110 William St., the city Industrial Development Agency will hold a public hearing on whether to give the Yankees an extra $259 million in tax-free bonds, on top of the $940 million they already received. (The Mets are asking for another $83 million, too, but they’re still second fiddle even on the business pages.) Barely 24 hours later, the IDA board will vote, and one way or another this whole sorry affair will be behind us — except for the next 30 years we’ll spend paying new stadium ticket prices.

So, with no further ado, here’s what you need to know for this Thursday’s mayhem… [read more]

The long-awaited death of Coney Island looks like it may finally be at hand, and there’s plenty of blame to go around:

Coney Island in winter always feels desolate, but this year the spooky whistle the wind makes as it rattles the Astrotower sounds especially mournful. After two straight years of “last summer ever!” at Coney, 2009 is starting to feel like the end for real. Astroland itself is in the process of being packed up — possibly for shipment to Australia — leaving only the Cyclone and the smaller Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park as remnants of Coney’s once-great amusement district.

Along the boardwalk, huge “For Lease” signs cover the storefronts, and no one’s sure which will reopen next spring.

Such is what’s become of the city’s 4-year-old plan to “revitalize” Coney Island via a sweeping rezoning plan to bring in housing and “entertainment retail.”… [read more]

Yes, “Condos Fizzle While Homelessness Burns” would have made a better Nero reference, and it’s what I suggested originally, but character counts are a harsh mistress. In any case, read on about how New York is facing a simultaneous housing glut and housing shortage:

To see one of the dilemmas facing New York in the post-Wall Street economy, just turn on “Top Chef.” When the gourmet gang gets sloshed between challenges, the balcony they’re lounging on belongs to 20 Bayard Street in Greenpoint: one of many apartment towers that have sprung up around McCarren Park to sell overpriced condos to wannabe hipsters — only to see the housing boom go bust, making a temporary rental to chefs look like a good deal.

If construction cranes marked the New York of the ’00s, vacant luxury buildings could be emblematic of the ’10s… [read more]

New York is looking at massive cuts in school spending – should an education bailout be part of Obama’s economic rescue package?

Anyone reading headlines of late has to feel like we’re on the fast track to apocalypse: Unprecedented bus and subway fare hikes; a slash of more than $2 billion from state education funding; and that’s before even getting into the indignity of paying $1.06 a song on iTunes.

The trick, as always, is figuring out which of the harbingers of doom are real, and which are scare tactics meant to shock the populace into finding other ways to stave off disaster… [read more]

The sports industry is getting hit hard by the sinking economy, and you know what that means:

While most people’s attention focused on the Big Three auto execs’ hybrid-car rally from Detroit to Washington, another prominent American industry was starting to look green around the gills. This month has not been a happy one for pro sports teams: The Houston Comets, winners of the WNBA’s first four titles, shut down when the league couldn’t find a buyer; the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes were reported hemorrhaging cash and headed for bankruptcy; and the Arena Football League assured fans that, just because it doesn’t have a commissioner or a schedule for next season, doesn’t mean that it’s folding … yet… [read more]

UPDATE: Mere hours after this article appeared, the Arena Football League announced that it was canceling its 2009 season to work on “developing a long-term plan to improve its economic model.” One hopes that bailouts won’t be involved.

Despite a court ruling ordering New York state to give New York City more money to reduce class sizes, city officials have resisted doing so:

For public school parents, last week’s declaration by Gov. Paterson that next year’s state budget will include massive education cuts had to send chills down their spines. In a city where teachers have to beg parents for basic supplies, the prospect of even skimpier school budgets is the sort of thing that gets people researching parochial schools, if not other cities to move to.

It also should draw more attention to how the school system uses what money it already has… [read more]

As much as I hate to write about hunger during hunger season, it’s a key moment in what’s becoming a growing crisis, with need on the rise and donations on the wane:

Just to dispel any misconceptions: There were no laid-off Lehman Brothers brokers lined up for the food pantry outside Mount Zion AME Church in East Harlem on Friday morning. The people lugging their empty shopping carts looked like any bunch of New Yorkers you’d see on the subway: old, young, and in-between, some good-humored, others griping about cutting in line.

Those lines are longer than ever now &emdash; the one at Mount Zion started forming three hours before the doors opened. But that has nothing to do with Lehman and its Wall Street ilk either… [read more]