Priorities: Sports Stadiums vs. Mass Transit Stations

Last week I drove past Citi Field - the Met's new $850 million dollar stadium.  That same week I read about the next plan to transform NYC's Farley Post office into a new mass transit hub.  Politicians have been trying to upgrade Penn Station and/or combine it with the giant post office on 9th Avenue for many years, however, no progress has been made.  Just as when Thomas Friedman describes his trip from Zurich Airport to JFK as a trip from the Jetsons to the Flintstones, the comparison of sports stadiums vs. mass transit stadiums provides some powerful insight into our priorities.

The original Penn Station was (see pics to the left) was designed by the famous architects McKim, Meade and White and it was destroyed in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden and the underground Penn Station.  Although renovated in the last few years, it is still an awful station at best - nothing close to Grand Central Station. When you compare Penn Station to Berlin's new Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) you can't help yourself from laughing.  What is even more concerning is that Penn Station is in much better shape than countless subway stations and other mass transit infrastructure such as bridges (just look at the rust on some of them).

True, the Germans love their trains and clean efficient mass transit, but NYC has a new Mets Stadium, Yankee Stadium, a new Meadowlands Stadium on the way and a plan for a new Nets stadium in Brooklyn.  The Mets stadium as I mentioned cost $850 million to construct and the new Yankee Stadium cost $1.5 billion - making it the most expensive stadium ever built in the United States.  While the numbers very depending on the source I read both ball teams received hundreds of millions in tax-exempt bonds.  There is no denying that building and maintaining these stadiums create many jobs and these baseball teams pay millions in taxes to the city each year.  However, you must wonder if this is the best use of our tax dollars.  I wonder how many jobs improving the NYC's infrastructure would create, how many more businesses might locate in NYC if there was improved transportation as well as additional tax incentives.  USA Today has a good in-depth analysis of how much the stadiums will really cost NYC, which you can read here.  Below are a few highlights:


"The Yankees have received a total of $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds and $136 million in taxable bonds; the Mets got $697 million in tax-free bonds....The city's Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded agency that provides non-partisan information about financial issues, estimated the Yankees deal will cost the city $362 million, the Mets' agreement $138 million. Savings to the teams: $787 million over 40 years for the Yankees, $513 million for the Mets."

"Other estimates vary, as figures in the complex deals are interpreted differently. New York State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, D-Westchester, the most vocal critic of the deals, says the taxpayers' tab for Yankee Stadium eventually will total $4 billion. (He includes potential property tax revenue over 40 years given up in the deal, although stadium advocates argue the teams weren't paying property tax at their old stadiums.) "I don't know what you think about bank bailouts, but the public is spending $4 billion to build Yankee Stadium, at a time we can't fund the (subway system) and schools," he says, adding the deals are a misuse of a financing tool called PILOTS (payment in lieu of taxes)."

Plus, I can not forget to mention that Citi (pre-recession) agreed to pay $20 million over 20 years for naming rights to the new stadium.  Citi as we all know later received billions of dollars in government TARP bailout money.