by Paul Menchaca, Western Queens Editor - March 04, 2004
When City Councilman Eric Gioia recently said that he would want to see the New Jersey Nets scrap their plans to move to Brooklyn, in favor of building a new stadium over the Sunnyside rail yards, more than a few eyebrows were raised.
Sunnyside Railyards in Queens
However, when Gioia reiterated the plan at an economic forecast conference in Long Island City last week, it did not win a favorable response from financial experts at the event. The economists argued that building a new stadium in Queens would not prove to be a boost to the local economy.
Bruce Ratner recently bought the Nets and wants to build a $450-million arena in downtown Brooklyn. His plan would require displacing hundreds of residents, which has been met with an uproar in the community.
Gioia, from Woodside, showed up last week in Brooklyn at a rally against the proposed arena, saying that Queens would welcome the Nets here. The councilman also proposed the area next to Shea Stadium in Flushing as a possible site for the arena.
Gioia called the Sunnyside rail yards “a place in need of a platform and an intermodal station.” He also proposed making a pitch to the New York Jets, who have been looking into building a stadium on the west side of Manhattan near the Javits Center.
“I don’t think people will fight this stadium,” Gioia said. “I think they will welcome it. For too many years the rail yards have cut off Long Island City from the rest of Queens.”
However, Jonathan Bowles, research director for the Manhattan-based Center for an Urban Future, believes that the best way for the city to build its economy is to “think small” and help build neighborhoods by putting the emphasis on homegrown businesses.
“Stadiums are not the greatest thing for a city’s economy, as any economist will tell you,” Bowles said.
Jason Bram, regional economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, agreed that trying to lure another sports franchise into the neighborhood wouldn’t guarantee an economic boon to the Queens economy.
“If you have to pay so much money to get them to come here, you have to wonder whether it is a natural fit,” he said.
Both men pointed to Shea Stadium as being an example of a stadium that has not done much to really transform the neighborhood where it is located. Bram said that Shea is “sort of removed from the neighborhood,” meaning that its location is good for commuters, but is not really entrenched as a part of Flushing.
Bowles can’t understand why the Flushing community has not been included in the marketing of Shea Stadium, or the U.S. Open. He believes the “unique qualities” of Queens should be tied into the marketing of the sports events, especially the ethnic restaurants.
There is support for the doubts that Bram and Bowles harbor toward building another stadium in Queens. In a report published last year in the Washington Post, Doug Brandow, of the Cato Institute, criticized a proposal to build a baseball stadium in Washington, D.C.
In his report, Brandow argued that building a new stadium would not benefit the local economy, citing a University of Chicago study of 10 metropolitan areas that bought sports teams, none of which showed a net employment increase.
“The only benefit is private, not public,” Brandow wrote.
When the Yankees and Mets were renegotiating their stadium leases in the ’90s, the city’s Independent Budget Office conducted a study into the economics surrounding the two teams, and also found limited economic benefit to building new stadiums. Both the Yankees and Mets have expressed an interest in building new ballparks.
“Sports teams are not reliable economic engines,” the 1998 report concluded. “Studies on the economic impact of teams suggest that they do not generally yield increases in jobs, population, or income for metropolitan areas.”
It did find that the economic impact of a sports franchise can be felt if a team decided to move from the metropolitan area to the suburbs. However, the report concluded that “very substantial contributions from the teams would be required to make the new stadiums a fiscal winner for the city.”
From The Queens Chronicle
