Neil deMause: The Website

The new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees are a year away from completion, and they’re costing less and creating fewer headaches for local residents than expected. Just kidding!

When Mets and Yankees fans arrive for the start of the new season, the teams’ past and future will be on display side by side—and not just Pedro Martinez and Johan Santana or Andy Pettitte and Joba Chamberlain. At a record-shattering price tag of more than $2.5 billion, twin homes for New York’s ball clubs are being readied for their 2009 openings—and in the Bronx in particular, the repercussions are affecting not just the city treasury but the local neighborhood… [read more]

Barely two weeks after I wrote about the rising public costs of the new Yankees stadium, those costs have risen yet again:

Baseball may be a game of numbers, but this is ridiculous: Sports fans (or just concerned taxpayers) who opened their morning paper today could read that the city cost of building new parks to replace those obliterated for a new Yankees stadium had risen 48% to $190 million, and also 122% to $288 million. It’s enough to make WXRL seem easy to understand by comparison.

The explanation, it turns out, is that it depends on what you mean by “parks”…

It’s been a while since I’ve had an excuse to do a new tally of the public costs of the Yankees and Mets deals, so I was pleased to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg put his foot in his mouth about the stadiums last week:

On his weekly radio show Friday, Mayor Bloomberg was asked why the city was subsidizing stadiums for the Mets and Yankees. His response: “The city and the state, to my recollection, each put in $75 million” for each new stadium — a mere fraction of the total cost. “It was a really good deal,” he added.

For a data-crazed mayor, Bloomberg can be awfully loose with his numbers… [read more]

I’ve also put up a new spreadsheet of the public/private cost calculations underlying this article, for those interested.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s long-awaited rezoning plan for Coney Island was finally released yesterday. But while most news outlets were distracted by the pretty pictures, they largely missed the bigger story - the city’s plan to use a never-before-tried zoning ploy to stick a fork in developer Joe Sitt’s condo dreams:

The reverberations from Mayor Bloomberg’s bombshell announcement that he intended to remap Coney Island’s amusement district as parkland were still echoing Thursday night when neighborhood denizens piled into Our Lady of Solace Church on Mermaid Avenue to hear Coney Island Development Corporation president Lynn Kelly give her board—and the public—the lowdown on the city’s plans.

The upshot, two hours of Powerpoint later: Bloomberg is moving ahead with plans to revamp the amusement district, but Joe Sitt’s condos-by-the-boardwalk plan is off the table—and the city plans on salting the earth to make sure things stay that way… [read more]

When the Yankees got permission to build their $1.3 billion stadium complex in a Bronx park, the city promised to provide interim park space for local residents to use until new permanent parks are ready. How’s that working out? About as well as the stadium deal itself:

At the new park, the old parking-lot gates turn out to be padlocked shut; those on foot can walk around them, but anyone in a wheelchair will be out of luck. Inside, a track skirts the edges of a single field shared by soccer players and a softball game. Where Macombs Dam Park was grass (often threadbare from the pounding of soccer cleats), here the turf is an artificial substance called tufted nylon that is a slick, plasticky green—”like dead Christmas trees,” remarks former Community Board 4 member Anita Antonetty… [read more]

August was a month for two major anniversaries: One year since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and the 10-year mark since President Clinton signed “welfare reform” into law. Thanks to my Extra! article on poverty coverage in the wake of the storm I’ve been on the radio talking about the former a bunch (see links at the bottom of this item); on the latter, stay tuned for future media analysis.

It was also the 58th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s death - who says anniversaries have to be in multiples of ten? - and the Yankees celebrated by walling off a public park and holding an invitation-only stadium groundbreaking while community members protested outside. I celebrated by poring through more city documents, which revealed that not only had the Yankees billed taxpayers for their stadium lobbying costs (as I reported last month), but also for the salaries of several of George Steinbrenner’s relatives, and for the lawyers who drew up the lease that let them do all this in the first place. Plus, the city could have gotten this money back, but tore up the Yanks’ (and Mets’) IOUs as part of new stadium deals, adding an extra $46 million in subsidies to what’s previously been divulged. Happy deathday, Babe!

Elsewhere for the rapidly shrinking Village Voice, I reported on the raucous public hearing over Bruce Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards development project for Brooklyn; with hundreds of people still waiting to testify as the clock neared midnight, the state told everyone left out to come to another hearing next month - on primary day. And then there was the “Roots Reggae Family Festival” in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park that preached of revolution but charged $40 a head for an event in a public park - leading to the odd spectacle of a concert where the vast majority of spectators were outside the gates, with a near-empty circle of lawn inside.

Finally, I’m extremely happy to announce that a newly expanded edition of Field of Schemes will be coming out in early 2008, from University of Nebraska Press. Expect both new chapters on recent events (the Yankee Stadium battle absolutely included), and updates on the stories in the original edition. And thanks to everyone who helped make this project a reality - you know who you are.

Until next week, I’m me. Send healthy thoughts (and cash if you like) to Kirk.

LATE ADDITION: Hear my radio appearances discussing post-Katrina poverty coverage on KCSB, WCCO, and the online Guy James Show.

Also, so long as you’re grabbing MP3 files, check out this one on PBS’ “Waging A Living” documentary - it’s with Barbara Ehrenreich, not me, but it’s one of the best discussions of poverty in America you’re likely to hear all year.