Jets Abandon West Side Dreams

It's finally over! The New York Jets have officially ended their bid for the West Side Railyards and their quest to put a football stadium in Manhattan. Now, the MTA will be free to bid out the land to whomever they please while the Jets try to figure out whether or not they want to share another stadium with the Giants in Jersey or if Queens politicians will bend over and offer them the Fountain of Planets site in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. In all honesty, Gothamist hopes that the excitement coming from the Jets this season will be from the football field, but we'll take what we can get.

Gothamist on the West Side Stadium debacle.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on September 1, 2005 11:20 AM

Comments [rss]

Brightliner

From what I understand, the current Shea already has movable seating sections. That design didn't work well, but I'm sure stadium designers have learned a few things since it was built 41 years ago.

hijiki

these days they could design the seating to be on a high-tech movable system which they couldn't do 30-40 years ago.

Brightliner

Well, if they can't have a dual-use stadium, then how about siting the two stadiums side-by-side? It's been done before. Then unless there's a scheduling conflict, the parking lot can be used year-round. Sharing infrastructure and transportation facilities makes sense when you consider that any single-purpose stadium generally gets used only six months a year.

S.D.

Hmm, are they contractually obligated to go for the next bidder??

Joe

Dual-use stadiums (stadia?) were very popular 30-40 years ago. They've gone out of favor for a few reasons, one of which is the seating configuration. A configuration that's good for football is lousy for baseball, and the compromise between the two isn't good for either.

Brightliner

I'm not a sports fan, so maybe I'm way off-base on this, but why can't the Jets go back to their previous home field (more or less)? With a new Shea Stadium in the works, is there any reason it can't be designed to accommodate both baseball and football, say maybe a removable mound and a retractable Astroturf field for football? The new Shea was supposed to be multipurpose for the Olympics anyway. If the Jets and the Mets pooled their considerable resources, they could build a kick-ass stadium that can be used through most of the year instead of just sitting around between seasons and halve their property taxes in the process. I'm sure MLB and the NFL could work out the team schedules so there's no conflict in September and October. They did it back when the Jets played in Shea for 19 seasons before jumping ship for Jersey.

JoeM

Doesn't this then mean that the MTA should go to the next highest bidder and force Cablevision to pay for the property like they said they were going to? The MTA will be lucky to see half of what it would have gotten otherwise. I hope Spitzer and Bloomberg team up and clean house at the MTA...

oscar madison

Any NY Knicks or NY Rangers season ticket holder who DOES NOT cancel their subscription should be taken out and flogged in Times Square - you are subsidizing criminals!