Digging up the dirt has only just begun…
I suppose I should be drinking the Kool-Aid that everybody has been serving up. If I let them tell the story the new home for the Mets will be like the infant baby Jesus for this boro in New York City. It will wipe away the eyesore of the ‘Iron Triangle’. A hodgepodge of junkyards and auto body repair shops where Thundercracker, Soundwave and I used to try to sell our stolen cars. The pitch so far has been the percentage of the construction costs that the Mets are ponying up. But inside the fine print I can see that NYC is biting off a far larger chunk than it can chew. Keep in mind that the Yankees are also being gifted with a new facility as well.
It all boils down to real estate and the city government gives it away to sports franchises like a fiefdom. The Big Apple beomes the ‘Big Plum’ for the Yankees, the Mets, the United States Tennis Association and soon, the Nets. No where in America, save for maybe Los Angeles is land this valuable. You have to understand another thing about New York City. It’s essentially a consortium of islands. At some point you run out of land to expand on so you begin to build upwards. This adds exponential value to the land because you can increase your tenancy on the original footprint. Just try to imagine the monthly rents for all the businesses that occupy a fifty story skyscraper. The landlord receives fifty monthly checks twelve times a year. This is why landlords run NYC with an iron fist. They force the politicians to amend the zoning laws and allow them to add fifty more floors to their fifty floor buildings.
It’s like getting free land from the city isn’t enough for the Mets either. In typical fashion they have begun to cut their construction costs by removing features from the facility that were highlights of the initial proposal. They was going to be a field surface that would have been reconfigurable for multi sport use. There were also going to install a high-tech retractable roof, but that design has been kicked to the curb as well. And in the ultimate display of selfish, tacky greed the Mets owners have decided to sell the naming rights to the stadium to CitiBank. Who cares what amount CitiBank is paying them, although the deal that Jay-Z and the Nets got from former slave holders Barclay’s Bank was pretty sweet.
Anyhoo, what CitiBank should do in their ultimate wisdom is cede the name of the park over to a local legend. like CASEY STENGEL CitiPark or JACKIE ROBINSON CitiField. That would be corporate classy and it would allow CitiBank to say, “See, we’re for the community.”
What do you think Mets’ fans?
