They worry about the economic shadow cast by 80-story office towers and luxury condos. Shane Keogh, 27, is a bartender at the Bellevue Bar, which offers cheap Budweiser and $1 video games. He wears a black-and-white jacket with a spade on each shoulder and a pompadour.
"Anytime people are working, it's good," he said. "But I don't know what the development will do to the culture of the neighborhood."
Railroad trains sit idle on the far west side of New York, where the city, the state and the New York Jets are close to a deal to build a $1.4 billion stadium.
(Dean Cox -- AP)
|
|
City planning officials have crafted generous tax breaks to persuade developers to build at least 2,600 subsidized apartments in Hudson Yards. Some of those subsidies could go to buildings in the surrounding neighborhoods. But housing advocates argue that developers might also ignore the tax breaks.
"The entire community is threatened by a vast wave of gentrification," said John Raskin, a spokesman for the Hell's Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance.
The stadium is more controversial. It would seat 75,000 fans and sit atop a 150-year-old rail yard. The city and state would build a floor over the yard and pay for the stadium's retractable roof. The price tag for that work is $600 million, although some estimates climb higher. The mayor argues that the stadium -- which would be used as a convention center on non-game days -- is central to the rebuilding. He says the stadium would pay for itself, although he has not explained how the financing would work.
Bloomberg talked a rather different game three years ago. When he took office in 2002, he rejected former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's proposal to spend $1.6 billion on a pair of baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets. Doomsayers predicted the Yankees would bolt to New Jersey.
But Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said recently that he would remain in the Bronx and build a new stadium with his own money.
"If you want to build something, you should pay for it," said Harvey Robins, a former top aide to two mayors and a critic of government subsidies for private enterprise. "We are making a huge and appropriate investment to build a subway line. Corporations should shoulder their own load."
Special correspondent Michelle Garcia contributed to this report.
