"City Approves $370.9 Million to Complete Yankee Stadium" NY Times 1/16/9

City Approves $370.9 Million to Complete Yankee Stadium

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: January 16, 2009

New York City’s Industrial Development Agency approved $370.9 million in primarily tax-exempt bonds on Friday to finish construction of Yankee Stadium with all the upgrades the team had sought, from better security to a new scoreboard to replace one that did not meet its needs.

The agency’s board voted 11 to 1, with one abstention, for the Yankees’ bond issue, which was debated, sometimes ferociously, at a State Assembly hearing on Wednesday and a public hearing held by the agency on Thursday. The Mets’ request for $82.3 million in tax-exempt bonds to complete Citi Field was approved unanimously with little debate.

The sole vote against the Yankees’ bond issue came from the representative for the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr. On Tuesday, Mr. Thompson faulted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the development agency for what he said was “financial incompetence” in their negotiations with the Yankees. He said that they had failed to properly monitor costs to the city like parkland to replace the acreage where the new stadium is built and the demolition of the old Yankee Stadium.

“We know it’s not a fair deal,” said John Graham, the deputy comptroller, who is Mr. Thompson’s representative. Mr. Graham said that the vote should be postponed to renegotiate the terms of the bond issue to force the Yankees to pay more in infrastructure costs.

Randy Levine, the Yankees’ president, said that without the additional tax-exempt financing (the development agency issued $942.5 million in 2006), completing the stadium “would be difficult and challenging, but not impossible.” He did not give details of what would not be finished, or built, if the Yankees did not get the financing.

He said that requests from the police and other emergency services to upgrade security, and from broadcasters to enclose the press box, raised the construction estimate; so did lawsuits that delayed construction and the discovery that the scoreboard and sound system the team ordered did not “measure up.”

“We changed things,” Mr. Levine said. “We had add-ons. We don’t have cost overruns.”

Mr. Levine said the team could not envision two years ago that it would need nearly $400 million more in bonds when it received approval for the first bond issue, which allowed the team to ask for $100 million in completion bonds.

But he said that since the team was using payments in lieu of taxes, or Pilots, to build the stadium, it was willing to bear any extra costs. With the additional bonds, the Yankees’ Pilots will be between $70 million and $76 million annually.

The Yankees will deduct those costs, plus about $30 million in stadium maintenance, from the revenue it is required to share with other major league teams.

Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said the Yankees had agreed to pay $2 billion if they leave during the term of their lease of at least 40 years, and to pay $30 million over those years to defray the city’s costs.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.