Yankee Stadium

(New) Yankee Stadium

The Stadium, The Big Ballpark in the Bronx, The Cathedral of Baseball, The House That Ruth Built
File:New Yankee Stadium.PNG File:Newyankeestadium.jpg Rendering of the New Yankee Stadium.
Location	E. 161 St. & River Ave. Bronx, New York
Owner	The New York Yankees
Capacity	52,325
Field size	Left Field - 318 ft (96.9 m) Left-Center - 399 ft (121.6 m) Center Field - 408 ft (124.3 m) Right-Center - 385 ft (117.3 m) Right Field - 314 ft (95.7 m)
Surface	Grass
Construction
Broke ground	August 16 2006
Opened	Opening Day April 2009 (planned)
Construction cost	$1.3 billion
Architect	HOK Sport
Tenants
New York Yankees (MLB) (2009-)

New Yankee Stadium is the new ballpark for the New York Yankees, currently under construction. The new ballpark will retain the Yankee Stadium title held by the current stadium. It is being built on the current site of Macombs Dam Park in the New York City borough of the Bronx, across the street from the current Yankee Stadium, which it will replace. The existing stadium opened in 1923 and the New Yankee Stadium is set to open in 2009.

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the stadium took place on August 16, 2006, the 58th anniversary of Babe Ruth's death, with team owner George Steinbrenner, then-Governor of New York George Pataki, and Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg among the notables donning Yankees hard hats and wielding ceremonial shovels to mark the occasion. The new facility has a planned 2009 opening, coinciding with the opening of Citi Field, future home of the New York Mets. At a total cost of $1.3 billion (US), it is roughly 500 times the cost of the original Stadium in 1923, and the most expensive stadium ever built in the United States as well as the second most expensive stadium ever built in the world (after Wembley Stadium, London, United Kingdom)..

History

Gate 4 of the new Yankee Stadium. March 9, 2008

The Yankees' desire to move to a new stadium dates back to the 1980s, where Yankee owner George Steinbrenner publicly considered a move of the franchise to a safer area of the New York City metropolitan area, even the possibility of moving the team across the Hudson River over to New Jersey. The South Bronx was considered a bad neighborhood. However, in the 1990s, with the team becoming successful on the field, attendance increased dramatically. With the large number of people coming to the Bronx, and the increased security in the area on game days, the public safety situation became less of a problem, and thoughts turned to a new or renovated stadium in the Bronx.

Days before leaving office in December 2001, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced "tentative agreements" for both the New York Yankees and New York Mets to build a $5 billion stadium. Of $1.6 billion sought for the stadiums, city and state taxpayers would pick up half the tab for construction, $800 million, along with $390 million on extra transportation. The plan also called for forgiving $80,000 that the Mets owed the city in cable revenues and giving both teams an additional $25 million in planning money. The plan also said that the teams would be allowed to keep all parking revenues, which state officials had already said they wanted to keep to compensate the state for building new garages for the teams. The teams would keep 96% of ticket revenues and 100% of all other revenues, not pay sales tax or property tax on the stadiums, and would get low-cost electricity from New York state. Business officials criticized the plan as giving too much money to successful teams with little reason to move to a different city.

During his eight years as mayor, Giuliani was a constant advocate of publicly funded stadiums. The dual $1 billion plans had also been put forth unsuccessfully by Giuliani in 1996. Giuliani faced questions about how to finance these stadiums, while the city struggled to balance the budget. Recently built stadiums in Baltimore and Cleveland had cost one-third to one-fourth the $1.3 billion set aside for the proposed New York stadiums; the $1 billion stadiums were to be the most expensive in American history. His 1998 plan to relocate the Yankees to the west side of Manhattan had been met with strong opposition; at that time, $3 million in city money was given to the Yankees for site planning. Six city officials were sent on a city trip to explore stadiums in Baltimore, Denver and other cities.

Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani as mayor, exercised the escape clause in the agreements to back out of both deals, saying that the city could not afford to build new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets. Bloomberg said that unbeknownst to him, Giuliani had inserted a clause in this deal which loosened the teams' leases with the city and would allow the Yankees and Mets to leave the city on 60 days' notice to find a new home elsewhere if the city backed out of the agreement. At the time, Bloomberg said that publicly funded stadiums were a poor investment. Under Bloomberg, the New York City government would only offer public financing for infrastructure improvements; the teams would have to pay for the stadiums themselves. Bloomberg even went so far as to call the former mayor's agreements "corporate welfare." Giuliani had already been instrumental in the construction of taxpayer-funded minor league baseball facilities KeySpan Park for the Mets' minor league Brooklyn Cyclones and Richmond County Bank Ballpark for the Staten Island Yankees.

On June 18, 2008, the Yankees announced two new restaurants will open in the new stadium, and will be open year round to both ticket holders and non ticket holders. A Hard Rock Cafe and a new restaurant named NYY Steak will both be located beyond right field; neither eatery will have a view of the field.

Design

File:VIEW FROM HOME PLATE popup.jpg

Computer rendering of the new Yankee Stadium interior

The new stadium's design, by HOK Sport, consists of two separate structures. The exterior will be a wall circling the perimeter of the Yankees' new property, and will resemble the pre-renovation exterior of the original Yankee Stadium. The interior will be a modern ballpark, with increased modern amenities that have become a staple of every new ballpark since Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in Baltimore, Maryland in 1992. It will feature a replica of the copper frieze (facade), that lined the inner wall of Yankee Stadium's upper deck until 1973. This lining was torn down during the 1974–75 renovations. A replica of this frieze lines the portion of the original structure that was removed during those renovations, beyond the outfield wall. It is above the bleachers and faces River Avenue. The Yankees use this frieze as a marketing tool on television and in print, and have allowed the sporting-goods chain Modell's to use it, as well.

Between the perimeter and the stadium will be an area that those in the Yankee organization are calling a "great hall," which would feature more than one million square feet of retail space, a significant increase from the current ballpark.

The field's dimensions will be identical to those at the current Yankee Stadium and at George M. Steinbrenner Field spring training/minor league baseball facility in Tampa, Florida (although not the same dimensions used when Yankee Stadium reopened in 1976). The new stadium will seat 51,000 fans, with a total capacity of approximately 53,000 (including standing room), compared with 57,545 in Yankee Stadium (although that number does not include seating in luxury boxes). The new stadium's seating will be spaced outward in a bowl, rather than upward in stacked tiers, placing most fans further back but lower to the field compared to tier seating. Lower level seats will be near 30,000 (compared with 20,000 in the current Stadium) with about 20,000 seats in the upper deck. The stadium has a split upper deck design seen in new stadiums such as Citizens Bank Park, with seating sections above and below the upper concourse and a view of the field from the concourse itself. While nothing has been announced, these two sections are expected to be priced differently, much like the current Tier Box closer to the field and the Tier Reserve. There will be half as many bleacher seats as the existing Stadium's 7,500, but 1,000 standing room spots will be added. In addition, there will be 60 luxury boxes between the second level and the upper deck. The current Stadium has 16 luxury boxes, around both sides of the press box, which is directly behind home plate.

Monument Park

Monument Park, which features the Yankees' retired numbers, five freestanding monuments, and a few dozen plaques dedicated to some of the Yankees' great players and managers (and Yankee Stadium visitors) beyond the left-center field wall, will be relocated to the new stadium. Based on designs revealed in 2005, the new Monument Park will be in center field, situated under a restaurant covered in black tinted glass, which would serve as the batter's eye.

Transportation

File:New-yankee-stadium2.jpg

Artist rendition of New Yankee Stadium from the street

The new stadium will be served by the same station complex as the current stadium: 161st Street-Yankee Stadium of the New York City Subway. The stadium will also be served by multiple bus lines and have ferry service. There are also plans for a Metro-North station to serve commuters from Manhattan via Grand Central Terminal and 125th Street, from New York's northern suburbs, and from Connecticut.

Parking lots and garages

Aside from existing parking lots and garages serving the stadium, construction for additional parking garages is planned. The New York State Legislature agreed to $70 million in subsidies for a $320 million parking garage project. On October 9, 2007, the New York City Industrial Development Agency approved $225 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of three new parking garages that will have 3,600 new parking spaces, and renovation of the existing 5,569 parking spaces nearby. Plans initially called for a fourth new garage, but this was eliminated before the final approval. The garages will be built (and renovated) by the Community Initiatives Development Corporation of Hudson, N.Y., a nonprofit entity that will use the parking revenue to repay the bonds and pay a $3 million annual land lease to the City of New York. Parking is expected to cost $25 per game.

Subway station

Main article: 161st Street-Yankee Stadium (New York City Subway)

The Yankees have asked for new entrances to be constructed on the north side of the 161 Street subway station, since most of the entrances are currently on the south side, closer to the current stadium. With the MTA claiming to face debt in upcoming years, that construction is not considered to be a priority. Currently, to save money, not every entrance and exit is open at the station on game days, leading to crowded platforms.

Metro-North station

Main article: Yankee Stadium (Metro-North station)

On May 21, 2007, Crain's New York reported that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority concluded an agreement with the City of New York to design and build a new commuter rail station on the Metro-North Commuter Railroad's Hudson Line, which runs adjacent to Yankee Stadium. The MTA has indicated that trains from all three Grand Central Terminal-based lines will serve the stadium on game days. The MTA awarded a Design-Build contract to CCA-Halmar, and a construction management contract to DMJM+Harris, the firm responsible for the design of the Second Avenue Subway. The new station, intended to handle 10,000 commuters on game days, will cost $91 million; the city is paying $39 million, with MTA funding the rest.

Prior to this announcement, the station's fate was unclear. The night before the new stadium faced a City Council vote — the last legislative approval needed — Governor Pataki urged the state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build a station for the Metro-North commuter railroad's Hudson Line, which runs adjacent to Yankee Stadium. This project has been promoted for several decades, and in the MTA's annual budget since the 1980s. Despite being part of the old Yankee Stadium renovation plan during the 1970s, the station never materialized. As a result, many questioned whether the project will ever come to fruition.

The new station will provide service to all three Metro North lines (Hudson, Harlem and New Haven) via existing track connections that are not normally used for revenue passenger services. Approximately ten trains before and after the games will serve the station and will allow riders to leave from and travel to stations on all three Metro North lines. A shuttle train will also transport fans between the stadium and Grand Central Terminal, potentially helping to reduce traffic on the subway lines used to connect to New Jersey Transit and Long Island Railroad trains at Penn Station.

Financing

New Yankee Stadium under construction, June 28, 2008

Rather than the $800 million value affixed to the stadium (which is for the stadium and not for the parking garages, highway improvements and other items associated with the construction), independent analysts have set the tab for the complete project closer to $1.3 billion. The city's share includes allowing the Yankees to occupy 22 acres of Macombs Dam Park and John Mullaly Park (which is already used for stadium parking on game days), and to build parking garages on those parks. City-funded artificial surface will be placed on top of those parking garages to make up for the lost parkland. The city would retain ownership of the land, but would not charge the Yankees rent or property taxes. The city currently charges rent at Yankee Stadium; no sports teams pay property taxes in New York. In addition, the city would foot the bill for acquiring scattered parcels of land near the waterfront, about a half-mile away, and building smaller parks there, even though the project was precipitated by the Yankees' desire to acquire the current parkland. The cost of renovating the existing parkland would be about $25 million; building new parkland will cost $150 million. That cost includes demolition costs for the historic Yankee Stadium, which would be completely torn down. The building's destruction would be paid for entirely by the city and replaced with parkland. The city will also issue tax-exempt bonds for the Yankees' new stadium. The Yankees would repay those bonds with payments in lieu of taxes; the Yankees have not paid taxes.

The Yankees have arranged for the lease on Yankee Stadium to be classified as an 'operating lease' even though many accountants think that the Yankees' early involvement in the building of the stadium should have precluded operating lease accounting. This is extremely important to the financing because it means that the Yankees will be able to keep significantly more revenue from the stadium and will not have to share it with the rest of Major League Baseball.

New York state taxpayers will pay $70 million to help the Yankees build parking garages (as authorized by the State Legislature). The parking garage project would cost $320 million. City and State taxpayers will forgo up to $7.5 million annually in lost taxes resulting from the sale of $225 million in tax-exempt bonds authorized on October 9, 2007, by the New York City Industrial Development Agency to finance construction and renovation of the parking garages. However, if the parking revenues are not enough to pay a reported $3.2 million land lease to the City of New York, the entity that will operate the parking garages and collect revenue will be able to defer that payment. State taxpayers, through money that has accumulated from the MTA's budget since the 1980s, will also pay all of the costs of a train station on the Metro-North commuter railroad.

In addition to the public subsidies and billions of dollars of increased revenue, the Yankees will benefit from a change to Major League Baseball's 2002 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which allows teams to deduct new-stadium building costs from the revenue-sharing payments they make. For the Yankees, whose $200 million player payroll makes them the largest contributor to the revenue-sharing pool, this means 40 percent of their share of the price tag may be borne by the remaining 29 baseball teams. All told, the Yankees and the taxpayers can each expect to pay about $450 million, and the Yankees will cover the remaining costs from diverting revenue sharing payments that would have been paid to the other baseball teams.

Lonn A. Trost, the Chief Operating Officer of the Yankees, confirmed in February, 2008 that the new stadium would retain its original name, Yankee Stadium.

Public opinion

Objections

The stadium project has been panned by many community groups, urban planners, and parks, health, and public transportation advocates. In the fall of 2005, Bronx Community Board 4 voted against the project (the board's decisions are nonbinding). Opponents contend that a private business should not be entitled to more than $400 million in public subsidies, because they believe that there is no public benefit to the project. Opponents also object to demolishing the country's fourth-oldest baseball stadium, one of the defining structures in American sports.

The largest objections have come from neighborhood residents. Unlike previous stadium discussions, this one took place without the community's input. The Yankees obtained preapproval from the relevant legislators before announcing their plan, allowing no room for negotiation. The transfer of Macombs Dam and John Mullaly Parks was passed by the New York State Legislature without a public hearing in the days after the stadium’s design was unveiled. Opponents say this violates state and federal laws designed to protect parkland.

City officials, including Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr., say the parkland will be replaced with better parks. Community groups say the new parks would be small and scattered, compared with the 22 acres of central, continuous open space that was available. Some parks would be built on the Harlem River waterfront, which is one mile (1.6 km) away from the current parkland and requires walking under an interstate highway and over railroad tracks to access. Ten acres of the replacement parks would be built on artificial surface atop new parking garages; these parks would be closed to accommodate fans' cars on the 81 home game days, which account for almost half of the days during the six-month baseball season. Other parks would be built on the 9 acre site of Yankee Stadium, which would be completely torn down. The city has agreed to pay $150 million for the new parks and to demolish Yankee Stadium. Health advocates are concerned about the effect of increasing exhaust fumes and loss of 377 mature trees on this Bronx neighborhood, which has one of the highest childhood asthma rates in the United States.

Parks advocates contend that the Yankees are taking advantage of the neighborhood, which comprises the poorest congressional district in the United States. Comparisons have been made to other neighborhoods, such as those surrounding Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Central Park in Manhattan, where every inch of parkland is carefully guarded from the incursion of private business onto these public spaces.

Community groups want the Yankees to use several available parcels of land south of East 161st Street to build their stadium, or to renovate Yankee Stadium. A plan discussed in 1998 estimated the cost of stadium renovation at $200 million. Renovating the existing parkland would cost about $25 million.

The Yankees and elected officials have also said that Yankee Stadium is "falling apart". The city's Buildings Department, which examines all city-owned buildings (including Yankee Stadium) annually, says the stadium is structurally sound enough to stand for many decades to come, despite a 1998 accident where one of the stadium's support beams collapsed hours before a game was scheduled to be played.

Supporting views

City officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, say the neighborhood will benefit from the new stadium, even with the two large parks being replaced with much smaller and scattered segments of parkland. Yankees President Randy Levine says a new stadium will create thousands of jobs for the community. The New York City Economic Development Corporation, whose members are appointed by the mayor, says the stadium would increase the city’s tax base by $96 million over a 30-year period, (a figure considerably smaller than the $450 million the public is chipping in to bring the new stadium to life). Moreover, the Yankees have claimed that stadium renovations would eventually become so expensive as to provide no advantage over replacing the venue.

It also ensures that the Yankees will remain in New York City for the next several decades. In the 1980s, the Yankees flirted publicly with relocating to the Meadowlands Sports Complex, saying that fans—many of whom live outside New York City itself—were unwilling to travel to the South Bronx for games, mostly because of traffic concerns (the current stadium can be accessed by subway, but not by Metro-North) and crime concerns outside the stadium. Even when the team won the 1996 World Series, few weekday home games drew crowds much beyond half the stadium's capacity, and some did not exceed 20,000 spectators. The recent upswing in attendance, partially due to $5.00 tickets for selected mid-week night games since 2002 (the Yankees have attracted 4 million fans a season each year since 2005, averaging nearly a sellout every game) has rendered those arguments moot.

Finally, supporters of the new stadium point out that the New Yankee Stadium actually resembles the original "classic" Yankee Stadium more than the current structure (due to the 1974-75 renovations). The original Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium, designed for football, track meets, and non-sports related gatherings, as well as baseball. The new venue will be a baseball-only stadium.

Red Sox Jersey Burial

During construction of the Stadium, a construction worker named Gino Castignoli, an avid Boston Red Sox fan, buried a David Ortiz jersey underneath the visitors' dugout with the objective of placing a hex on the Yankees, much like the Curse of the Bambino that had long plagued the Red Sox (however, the curse somewhat backfired on David Ortiz as Big Papi started the season hitting poorly, then improving once the jersey was removed). He was later exposed by co-workers and the jersey has since been exhumed. The Yankees organization donated the jersey to the Jimmy Fund, a charity long associated with the Red Sox. The jersey eventually sold on eBay for $175,000 and the proceeds donated to the Jimmy Fund. Castignoli has since claimed to have buried a 2004 American League Championship Series scorecard, but has not said where he placed it.

Construction gallery

• 
  Steel support beams for the upper deck of the new Yankee Stadium, as seen the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium subway station. November 10, 2007.
• 
  The future Great Hall at the new Yankee Stadium. November 10, 2007.
• 
  New Yankee Stadium under construction. November 7, 2007.
• 
  Construction of the new Yankee Stadium as seen from the current stadium. June 15, 2007.
• A view of the new facing on Opening Day, April 1, 2008. The eagle plaques are the same from the original stadium design, brought out of storage and refurbished.
  A view of the new facing on Opening Day, April 1, 2008. The eagle plaques are the same from the original stadium design, brought out of storage and refurbished.
• A view of the construction from the current stadium on Opening Day, April 1, 2008.
  A view of the construction from the current stadium on Opening Day, April 1, 2008.
• A view of the contsruction from the River Avenue parking garage on Opening Day, April 1, 2008.
  A view of the contsruction from the River Avenue parking garage on Opening Day, April 1, 2008.
• 
  New Yankee Stadium, June 7 2008.

See also

• Citi Field, a new baseball stadium for the New York Mets also scheduled to open in 2009.

External links

• Newsday.com New Yankee Stadium
• Ballparks.com overview of proposed stadium
• Photographic Updates of the Construction of the New Yankee Stadium
• Save Our Parks, a group against the construction of the stadium project
• Artist Renderings of the New Yankee Stadium
• Yankee stadium station gets Metro-North nod