Freddy's Bar, one of the buildings slated for demolition to make way for the new Nets arena in Brooklyn, is installing chains today so that patrons can attach themselves to their barstools if the bulldozers come. But as surprise last-ditch...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 20, 2009 01:31 PM
The New York City Independent Budget Office has issued an update of its 2005 study of the proposed Atlantic Yards arena to bring the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn, and as Norman Oder notes, has come up with "far more...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 10, 2009 10:48 AM
So much for a knock-down, drag-out fight over the NHL and antitrust law: Phoenix bankruptcy court judge Judge Redfield Baum rejected BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie's $212 million bid for the Phoenix Coyotes, essentially on technical grounds, saying there wasn't enough...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 16, 2009 08:27 AM
It appears that my article on the IRS tax-free bond ruling didn't actually make it over to the Voice - they still haven't worked all the bugs out of this "email" thing - so I instead post it here, for...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 22, 2008 03:32 PM
New York state assemblymember Richard Brodsky has joined U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich in questioning whether the Yankees inflated the value of their new stadium site in order to be eligible for tax-exempt bonds. As my Metro NY colleague Pat Arden...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 29, 2008 10:07 AM
The head of the sports authority that wants to buy Wrigley Field from the Chicago Cubs says renovating the 94-year-old ballpark would cost - hang onto your hats - as much as $400 million, but could be accomplished "at no...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 5, 2008 02:33 PM
It doesn't get a whole lot weirder than this: At a New York city council hearing on Monday on their accidental perpetual property tax exemption, representatives of Cablevision (the owners of Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, and Rangers) asserted that...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 9, 2008 01:30 PM
Pittsburgh controller Tony Pokora issued a report yesterday finding that the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates save $21 million a year in property taxes by having their facilities be owned by the state, not the private teams. (The teams do own...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 23, 2007 09:41 PM
In the wake of the possibly illegal stadium finance deals worked out by the New York Yankees and Mets earlier this year, the Internal Revenue Service has proposed new regulations governing the use of payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs)...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 20, 2006 03:50 PM
With the New York Yankees stadium land-use plan officially approved, the city council today moved on to consideration of the $930 million in bonds the team wants sold to finance construction costs. (The Mets bonds were discussed as well, but...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 10, 2006 10:14 PM
With all the trees that have been killed for documentation of the New York Yankees' and Mets' $1.8 billion worth of stadium plans, you'd think there would be no surprises left. You would be wrong. Yesterday, the New York City...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 4, 2006 09:19 AM
Remember that slush fund of developer fees that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted to use for a New York Jets stadium, back when there was still a New York Jets stadium in the works? The one that the mayor's...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 30, 2005 02:56 PM
Smith College sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has written his latest defense of New York's proposed stadium deals in a column for the Sports Business Journal, writing that "compared with the typical deal in the sports industry and previous proposals in...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 29, 2005 01:39 PM
The other shoe drops today, as the New York Yankees have scheduled a 4 p.m. press conference to announce their plans for a $1 billion stadium in what's currently Macombs Dam Park across the street from the House That Ruth...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 14, 2005 08:06 AM
New York's 2012 Olympic bid is not quite dead yet, as the International Olympic Committee says it would allow NYC2012 to submit an alternative stadium proposal if it wants. Of course, it's not like there are a ton of good...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 10, 2005 12:01 PM
The Brooklyn Nets arena hearing was scheduled to start at 1 pm, and by noon, close to 300 people were outside: members of the community group ACORN and union members (SEIU, UFCW), chanting "Jobs, Housing and Hoops!"; and on the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 26, 2005 10:51 PM
Still playing catch-up here from my trip to Baltimore to hear tales of corporate-subsidy hijinks from all corners of the country. (And play some Whack-A-Mole.) We'll go back to our regular news schedule tomorrow, but in the meantime, here's one...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 15, 2005 11:54 PM
Nothing fills a slow news day like a press release, a lesson that's been ably learned by the coalition opposing the $2 billion New York Jets stadium plan. The Hell's Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance (with major funding by Madison Square Garden...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 30, 2005 12:21 PM
As you may recall, the last time the New York mayor's office was asked to testify on why Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks he can spend city payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) on a Jets stadium without city council approval,...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 27, 2005 12:24 PM
Your latest heaping helping of New York Jets stadium news: City council speaker Gifford Miller is set to introduce today a bill to require city council approval before the mayor can spend developer PILOT payments on the Jets stadium project....
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 9, 2005 04:23 PM
Okay, I now have the Nets MOUs with the city of New York and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (PDFs downloadable here and here respectively), and I can shed a little more light on what's in them: As noted earlier, the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 5, 2005 12:10 AM
Throw another log on the New York Jets stadium controversy: city council speaker (and mayoral candidate) Gifford Miller, in his State of the City speech today, said he'll introduce legislation to require council approval of any stadium spending. Said Miller:...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 24, 2005 06:04 PM
Cablevision's bid for the erstwhile New York Jets stadium site just rolled across my e-mail transom (you can read the press release here and the full letter here), and it contains some fascinating tidbits about how just much the Madison...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 11, 2005 05:59 PM
So now that all the cards are on the table (more or less) regarding the New York Jets stadium deal, I think it's finally possible to say how much the team's public subsidy would be worth. This is going to...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 31, 2005 03:06 PM
In today's battlin' billionaire news, Cablevision (owner of Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks and Rangers) is asking the New York city council to pass a law blocking the city from spending money on a Jets football stadium...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 6, 2005 05:21 PM
The mystery of the missing $950 million may be one step closer to being solved. On Wednesday, New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff told the Bond Buyer that (in the Bond Buyer's words) "he believes there are sufficient PILOT payments...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 17, 2004 05:02 PM
As promised, New York's Empire State Development Corporation issued its official plan for the proposed $1.4 billion Jets stadium in Manhattan; as probably should have been anticipated given the previous paper trail, it's a Rube Goldberg scheme of subleases and...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 5, 2004 01:11 PM
Forget October: Now mlb.com reports that a decision "may not happen now until owners gather again in November for their final quarterly meetings of the year." Commissioner-for-life-plus-three-years Bud Selig told reporters at yesterday's owners' meeting: "Would we like to have...
Posted in Field of Schemes on August 20, 2004 09:49 AM
Since last week's item on the New York Jets' stadium finance plan was, shall we say, a bit on the obscure side, here's an attempt to answer some of the questions that have been raised by puzzled readers:Q: I'm confused....
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 27, 2004 06:30 PM
The enduring mystery of how the New York Jets would be eligible for tax-exempt bonds for a privately built stadium - normally a big IRS no-no - may be solved. According to notes buried deep in Citigroup's proposal to underwrite...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 20, 2004 04:45 PM
More tea-leaf reading on the never-ending New York Jets stadium finance saga. In today's Newsday, staff writer Graham Rayman reports that Jets president Jay Cross downplayed the significance of tax-exempt bonds, saying that (in Rayman's words) "the proposed use of...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 16, 2004 11:39 AM
Critics of the New York Jets' Manhattan stadium plan held a press conference on the steps of City Hall this afternoon, to call attention to the possibility, as raised here last week, that the team could be seeking to pay...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 15, 2004 05:36 PM
The case of the New York Jets and the tax-exempt bonds just keeps getting weirder. The whole brouhaha, you'll recall, started on Monday, when Newsday ran a front-page story asserting that the Jets were considering tax-exempt financing for their $800...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 9, 2004 01:36 PM
Yesterday I glossed over the illegality of the New York Jets' plan to use tax-exempt bonds for their $800 million share of stadium costs, passing along along $77.4 million of its costs to taxpayers. Given the widespread media confusion over...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 7, 2004 06:35 PM
Information about New York City's $5-billion-plus Hudson Yards plan continues to trickle out. At a panel this morning sponsored by the Fiscal Policy Institute and Good Jobs New York, Alan Anders of the city's Office of Management & Budget outlined...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 29, 2004 12:40 PM
More details are trickling in on New York's Hudson Yards plan: The latest is that the city's $350 million share of an expanded Javits Convention Center would be paid for by raiding PILOTs (surely you remember PILOTs) paid to the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 26, 2004 12:45 PM
The latest on the Montreal Expos fiasco from MLB grand poobah Bud Selig, as told to SI's Tom Verducci:"We [have said we'd like to find a buyer]Ýby the All-Star Game this year and I really hope [that's the case]. ......
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 11, 2004 10:41 AM
After more than a year's delay, New York City deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff has at last released his plan for financing the multi-billion-dollar Jets-stadium-plus-office-building development known as Hudson Yards - sort of.Under the plan announced this morning by Doctoroff at...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 11, 2004 01:57 PM
After speaking with several city development experts, many of whom were initially as baffled as we were as to how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg could approve hundreds of millions of dollars in Jets stadium subsidies without putting them up...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 6, 2004 01:00 PM
The New York Post reports that the proposed $5 billion Manhattan development project that would include a New York Jets stadium would be subsidized with PILOTs (payment in lieu of taxes), not TIFs (tax increment financing). As discussed earlier in...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 21, 2003 11:05 AM