City Hopes to Draw Constant Traffic to Subsidized Stadium Garages
If you thought it was bad enough that the city seized public park land in the asthma-choked South Bronx, turned that public land over to the New York Yankees to use for parking, and is currently on course to have taxpayers subsidize said parking to the tune of $8,000 per space, well, you'd be wrong. It gets worse.
The triple tax exempt bond plan for the new Yankee Stadium was hatched when no developers stepped up to bid on stadium parking deck construction, and their inherent unprofitability has now led the city's Industrial Development Agency to seek year round operation of the garages.
Via onNYTurf, the Observer does the math:
If all the new parking slots (9,179 total) arefilled every game day (81 times a year), the operator will bring in$18.59 million annually from Yankees-related revenue. But the $225million in bonds, if paid back over 30 years at 6.5 percent, wouldrequire $17.04 million a year in payments.
That leaves just $1.55 million a year forsalaries, maintenance, utilities and other operational costs—not tomention rent that the operator, the Bronx Parking DevelopmentCorporation, is supposed to pay the city.
“With recent and ongoing South Bronx developments, such as thedevelopment of the Bronx Terminal Market and the new Metro NorthStation, we expect there to be strong demand for parking on non-gamedays, which certainly help the financial viability of the project,” aspokeswoman e-mailed The Observer.
So, with the stadium deal, the city hopes to get into the business of inducing parking demand -- in an area it says will benefit from congestion pricing.
Photo: The Foo Fighter/Flickr
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