If You Don't Build It, Will They Come?

The prospects of New York's proposed West Side Stadium suffered a blow yesterday, as $300 million in financing  was quashed, due in part to abstentions by State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Senate Leader Joseph Bruno.

[Previously...]

The politics are knotty, involving not only the allocation of taxpayer funds, but also the city's 2012 Olympic hopes (a distinct priority for the Mayor), the Mayor's re-election campaign, and neighborhood spending payoffs to Silver (whose district includes the WTC site, and who most recently received an $820 million subsidy offer from Bloomberg and Governor Pataki) and other stadium opponents, which were widely seen as political quid pro quos for their support of the project.

Today, however, Silver intimated that supporting the project was never truly on the table, despite engaging the Mayor in lengthy negotiations this weekend ahead of the vote, and despite strong support of the project not only by Mayor Bloomberg, but also by Governor Pataki and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Mr. Silver disclosed that he never intended to approve the $2.2 billion stadium and hordes of hostile union workers declared the Manhattan Democrat an enemy of organized labor.

The day belonged to Mr. Silver, who spent much of Sunday in apparent negotiations over the project with Mayor Bloomberg but who made clear early in the day that nothing could have won his approval for a project that he said he views as nothing more than a larger scheme to relocate New York's financial center from Lower Manhattan to the West Side.

Mr. Bloomberg and Governor Pataki fervently supported the plan for what they called the New York Sports and Convention Center. Yesterday, however, when Mr. Silver was asked if the West Side stadium is now dead, he said: "It's never been alive."

The net effects of Silver's ploy are difficult to gauge.  As to 2012, International Olympic Committee watchers are mixed on whether New York's Olympic bid remains viable, absent a plan for the principal venue.  As to 2005, Sun Staff Writer Julia Levy argues Bloomberg may emerge from the rubble of this protracted battle as a stronger incumbent in this November's election.

Whoops.