What do you guys think... [Archive]

Jew4Life

06-16-2005, 07:13 PM

Mayor Bloombers new proposal to have the NYC2012 Olympics in Queens.
Read the full coverage here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/sports/othersports/13sider.html)...
For those of you who couldnt log in to NYT's site, the full article is bellow.

Suddenly, Mayor Sees Sparkle in Queens

By JIM RUTENBERG

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's announcement last night that the city would propose playing host to the 2012 Olympics at a new stadium in Queens went against almost everything he had said during the last year in his relentless pursuit of a glimmering new stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan. And now, as he begins a last-minute turnabout campaign to save his Olympic bid, earlier statements he has made may come back to haunt him.

Throughout Bloomberg's advocacy for a Manhattan stadium, which came to an unsuccessful end last week, critics and even supporters suggested that a Queens location made more sense for the Olympics and would be easier to push through governmental approval processes. But Bloomberg, not wanting to concede an inch to his opponents, or undercut his push for a West Side stadium, never wavered in his answer that such an alternative would be unglamorous, unaffordable and, ultimately, untenable.

No team would be interested in building a new stadium in Queens that would also be able to accommodate the specific dimensions of the Olympics, he argued. Olympic organizers, he insisted, would never be interested in a stadium that was not set against the dazzling Manhattan skyline. And the point was moot anyway, he said, because there was no way organizers would consider an alternative to the formal plan the city had submitted, with the West Side site at its heart.

With his new Queens plan, those comments will most likely pose new challenges to Bloomberg as he makes a final play for the 2012 Summer Games. They leave him and his key deputy on the bid, Daniel L. Doctoroff, walking a thin line.

Bloomberg and Doctoroff have already provided bid rivals with a raft of arguments against the Queens plan. And as the mayor now promotes the virtues of Queens, he runs the risk of seeming disingenuous, all the while giving his Democratic opponents - so many of whom argued for a Queens stadium - a chance to gloat. They will certainly be reminding voters of the mayor's earlier comments, which went over poorly in Queens and helped them to paint him as a creature of Manhattan.

And so Bloomberg and his aides have struck a middle ground: portraying the new proposal as a sign of the city's fortitude in the face of adversity - the state's refusal to approve the West Side stadium plan - while acknowledging outright that the new proposal is not their favorite.

"Our first best choice didn't work," Bloomberg said at City Hall last night. But, he added, "New Yorkers aren't quitters - we just don't walk away from our future."

Bloomberg was cool to the Queens idea early last week. That should not be surprising, considering his past comments about a Queens alternative to the West Side stadium, which his opponents began pushing this past winter. In February, he told reporters that Shea Stadium, or a new stadium nearby, would not impress the International Olympic Committee.

"You should get on a plane and go to see the places where the Olympics have taken place," he said. "You will realize that Shea Stadium is not of the same order of magnitude or grandeur that the I.O.C. wants for the Olympics."

But Bloomberg and his aides said he warmed to Queens when the owners of the Mets indicated that the team would be willing to build a new stadium that could be made to temporarily accommodate the Olympics, and after the Yankees had agreed to accommodate the Mets in 2012.

As for the political repercussions, if the mayor did not mind taking fire for pushing the Manhattan plan, he will probably not mind taking more for promoting Queens, a bastion of his fellow Republicans.

As he works to save the bid, the mayor is learning what city officials learned more than 120 years before him, when their insistence on keeping the 1883 World's Fair in Manhattan cost them the prize when the site proved unavailable.

The boroughs beyond Manhattan have what it takes for a robust sales pitch, and they can sometimes bail the city out of a jam.

This fact seemed to dawn on him last night. Expounding on the new site's accessibility to transportation and its proximity to other proposed Olympic sites - including certain features that the perceived front-runner for the Games, Paris, did not have - Bloomberg went so far as to say, "You can't have a better place."

Published: June 13, 2005