Neil deMause: The Website

A revised study of the Atlantic Yards arena shows that the city would now lose money on the deal, while Nets owner Bruce Ratner would save megabucks:

This just hasn’t been a good week for Bruce Ratner, the Nets owner who’d rather be the Nets’ landlord. First, he unveils a new vision of his much-derided Atlantic Yards arena plan — now with more metal mesh! — and gets slammed by Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff for creating an “oddly clunky composition.” Then this morning the Independent Budget Office issued its revised projections for the arena’s fiscal impact on city coffers, concluding that any new tax revenues wouldn’t be enough to pay for the city’s costs…. [read more]

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the demolition of Macombs Dam Park to make way for the Yankees’ new stadium, and work on replacement parks is still far off in the distance:

As anyone who’s been to a game at Fake Yankee Stadium lately can attest, the old home of the Bronx Bombers across the street remains relatively intact, nearly a year after its final game. The last of the seats were sliced out in early June (taking care to preserve them for sale to any collectors willing to cough up $750 apiece), and demolition scaffolding went up later that month. Since then, though, all has been mostly quiet: Despite reports that the centerfield “black” seats would be carted off to Reggie Jackson’s estate by now, they were still intact as of Friday, as were the foul poles; even the bat-shaped weathervane atop the flagpole is still in operation… [read more]

Beneath the longest headline known to man or blog, I examine the possible fallout of the NYC subway’s first-ever naming-rights deal:

That resounding “Ewwwww!” you heard emanating from Brooklyn was the sound of locals discovering that as part of Bruce Ratner’s revamped deal with the MTA for the Atlantic Yards site, he’s set to get naming rights to the Atlantic Avenue subway station. If it’s approved by the MTA board tomorrow as expected, the new station name — which as Ben Kabak notes at Second Avenue Sagas would bear the unwieldy moniker “Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street/Barclays Center — would presumably be put in place once Ratner’s new basketball arena opens, which is set to happen any century now… [read more]

What we’re losing in Detroit:

After a crazy Friday afternoon that featured a preservationist running onto the field at Tiger Stadium to serve a restraining order against the stadium’s demolition — too late to stop a backhoe from taking several bites out of the upper deck — Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentice Edwards is expected today to rule on whether the stadium will stand or fall. If Edwards issues a permanent stay of execution, the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, which includes SABR stalwarts Gary Gillette and Rod Nelson, gets to keep plugging away at its plan to save the remaining “Navin Field” section of the grandstand, roughly corresponding to the stadium’s original 1912 dimensions, and convert it into a community ballfield with some of the interior converted to office space and a museum. If not, expect the seat-munching to resume immediately.

The loss to baseball history and potential tourism aside (can you imagine what people would pay now to visit even a sliver of Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds?) there’s something else at risk here: Tiger Stadium is now the last surviving example of an old-style upper deck overhang.”… [read more]

Note that the judge was not impressed by my reasoning.

I sit through the first state legislative hearing on the Atlantic Yards project, so you don’t have to:

Today was the long-awaited — like, six years long — first state legislative hearing on Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project, with State Senator Bill Perkins convening his Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee (think of him as the Senate version of Richard Brodsky) at Pratt Institute.

While there were lots of questions that could have been raised, the one most everyone is wondering was: Is it still happening, and if so, does it bear the slightest resemblance to the vision that Ratner and then-architect Frank Gehry unveiled back in the Friends era?

Or will it now be a stripped-down arena surrounded by what the Municipal Art Society has dubbed Atlantic Lots?… [read more]

And still more on empty seats at New York’s new ballparks:

Apparently not even the prospect of starring in baseball’s new umpire replay videos is enough to induce New Yorkers to shell out $300 for tickets to the new Yankee Stadium.

After River Avenue Blues ran photos of entire empty sections during Friday’s matinee, things got even worse yesterday, when a mere 43,068 paying customers crossed the turnstiles.

Noting the “gaping sections of expensive seats from dugout to dugout,” the Times’ George Vescey observed: “Either the Yankees have not actually sold those seats, or the bankers and brokers with the corporate seats are taking weekend jobs to make ends meet in this rotten economy they helped create.”… [read more]

More on what those empty seats at Mets and Yankees games mean:

I went to a Mets game last week, and speaking as a Yankee fan, I have to admit that in the battle of the ballparks, the Mets won. Citi Field is far from perfect, but at least it feels like you’re at a baseball park — unlike the new Yankee Stadium, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a new Marriott with a really garish big-screen TV in the lobby.

What I noticed most, though, was something I’d never seen at a baseball game: The upper deck was packed to the gills, while the acres of hyper-pricey seats down below were half-empty… [read more]

I reviewed the Yankees’ new place, so now it’s the Mets’ turn:

First, some caveats: Citi Field is a typical HOK Populous modern stadium, with all that goes with that: Field-level seats close to the action, a wall of luxury/club seating in the middle, an upper deck that’s higher than you’d expect at old-time ballparks, overly quirky outfield dimensions, more places to buy overpriced food than some (present company included) might think necessary. The Mets owners have been fond of comparing their new taxpayer-aided home to Ebbets Field; the comparison doesn’t hold much better here than it did for Miller Park, which made the same claim.

That said, it’s immediately clear that the Mets got most of the details right here, especially compared to their rivals across the East River… [read more]

And another, even longer review of the Yanks’ new place (BP subscription required). The upshot:

The differences may be subtle—a deck lifted skyward a few feet here, pushed back a couple dozen there—but the overall effect is of a more imposing structure, without any of the close-stacked feel that made the old stadium more intimate, despite having nearly 5,000 more seats. Where in the old park it was perfectly reasonable to prefer the front of the upper deck to the back of the lower, no one will make that mistake here; the $70 “Terrace” seats at the front of the new upper deck feel as far away from the action as the $25 reserved seats were across the street, and the new cheap seats at the stadium’s top are as bad if not worse than the last row at the old place (sorry, Jay). As at many of the new stadiums, the class segregation here feels both deliberate and complete—only further compounded by the obstructed-view bleacher seats (the TV screens set up as a belated fix, I found yesterday, didn’t help much), by the team’s decision to exclude cheap-seats denizens from even eating at field-level concessions stands, and by a sunken walkway behind the “Legends” seats at the field’s edge that gives the odd impression that the Yankees have surrounded their highest-priced seats with a moat… [read more]

I visited the Yankees’ new stadium today, and survived. Read all about it:

As part of their “please don’t notice that you no longer have public parks” campaign, the Yankees opened the gates of their new stadium to Bronx residents today, distributing 15,000 ticket via community boards to watch the team take batting practice, and get a sneak preview of the borough’s first $2 billion attraction.

Of course, this being the age of StubHub and Craigslist, and community boards being what they are, the actual crowd that turned out today was only partly Boogie Down in flavor: a mix of local grade-school classes and decked-out Yankee fans who looked like they wouldn’t walk down Fordham Road on a dare. Also on hand: Joyce Hogi, the longtime Grand Concourse resident who as one of the founders of Save Our Parks was one of the primary opponents of the Yanks’ new digs… [read more]