TalB

Voice of the People for Aug. 22, 2008
Save Willets Point

Flushing: Councilman Hiram Monserrate should be congratulated for seeking to preserve more than 225 businesses in Willets Point that employ more than 1,300 people. Regardless of what the city says, it will never relocate those businesses or place those people in other jobs. The Willets Point proposal is a taxpayer ripoff for the benefit of fat-cat real estate interests and represents the ongoing demise of small business in the city.

Benjamin M. Haber

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/sp...tml?ref=sports
New Stadiums: Prices, and Outrage, Escalate

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: August 25, 2008


Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

The Yankees will play at the new Yankee Stadium next year.


Uli Seit for The New York Times

The Mets will play at Citi Field.


Suzy Allman for The New York Times

The Jets and Giants will play at their new stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. All four teams will raise ticket prices.

No American market has witnessed anything like it: two baseball teams and two football teams will open three new stadiums within 17 months and 20 miles of one another, with everything set to be in place by the fall of 2010.

But even as fans of the Mets, the Yankees, the Giants and the Jets look forward to state-of-the-art stadium architecture, better sightlines, wider concourses and more bathrooms, some of them are also facing startling increases in ticket costs during a serious economic downturn.

The teams are confident market research supports the increases, but season-ticket holders say the price they are being asked to pay in the new stadiums — the Mets’ $800 million Citi Field, the $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium and the $1.6 billion (and climbing) Jets-Giants stadium — is turning them into something other than fans. Instead, interviews with two dozen fans indicated, they are starting to feel like unwitting bankers.

“You’re asking me for money and giving me nothing in return,” said Steve Kern, a construction executive from Boonton Township, N.J., who owns two Jets season tickets. “I won’t be sharing in the revenues or get any perks.”

Kern, who organized a small protest outside the Jets-Giants exhibition game Saturday, said he objected to the sale of personal seat licenses, the one-time fees that simply give fans the right to buy season tickets at the new stadium the Jets and Giants will share.

The Giants have said they will charge from $1,000 to $20,000 a seat for their personal seat licenses; once fans buy the seat licenses, they will still have to pay from $85 to $700 a ticket. The Jets are expected to unveil their ticket plan Tuesday.

“Here I am, buying a stadium for John Mara,” said Hank Honig, an accountant from Middletown, N.J., who owns eight Giants season tickets, referring to the team’s co-owner. “I’d love to see him issue a registration statement like a stock offering that would disclose information we don’t know. This is a greedy ploy with the only benefits going to them.”

Mara, who has been dealing with an outpouring of complaints that he no doubt anticipated, responded, “They have ownership of their seats and can transfer it.”

Thomas Malmud, a real estate lawyer who has season tickets to the Jets, the Mets and the Yankees, said that paying for seat licenses made him feel as if he is helping the Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson, pay the team’s half-share of the new stadium. He seemed less upset with the Mets.

“The Jets and Giants want me to be an equity partner without any upside,” he said. “But with the Mets, the price has some relationship to the market for sporting tickets.”

His Mets seats will jump from about $88 a game to $175. “It’s a huge increase, but not unconscionable,” he said.

Fans are now calculating how expensive it will be for many of them to attend games at the new stadiums.

Tickets for the best seats at the 85-year-old Yankee Stadium, which sold for $1,000 a seat this season, will jump at the new ballpark to $2,500; in other areas of the stadium, they will range from $135 to $500 for season tickets. Prices for single-game tickets, which ranged from $14 to $400 this season, will be released later.

The best seats at Citi Field, which cost $276 at Shea Stadium this season, will soar to $495, with other season tickets ranging from $125 to $225 a game. Single-game tickets this season ranged from $5 to $117. (Citi Field’s capacity of about 42,500 compares with 57,333 at Shea.) Neither team has made known all of its prices. Both teams also say broad swaths of more modestly priced tickets will be available.

Typically, all four teams sell a majority of seats as season tickets.

The personal seat licenses will allow the Giants to collect an estimated $185 million, after taxes, which will help pay for their stadium bonds. Mara conceded that fans were helping to finance a stadium whose costs had more than doubled from what he called an initial, and sketchy, $750 million estimate.

“It’s impossible to build a stadium of this magnitude without public funding unless you do something significant with ticket prices or P.S.L.’s,” he said.

Dave Howard, the Mets’ executive vice president for business, said that Citi Field’s pricing was designed to make those who sit closest to the field pay the most so that prices can be kept reasonable elsewhere. “The market indicates that a sector of our fan base is willing to pay a premium price for a premium location,” he said.

The shift to Citi Field unsettles fans like Richard Mermelstein, a lawyer from Scarsdale, N.Y. Since buying two season tickets the day the Mets acquired Gary Carter in 1984, he has upgraded several times to loge seats behind home plate. His bill — $9,280 in 2006, $10,584 in 2007 and $13,060 this season — would spike to $24,300, or $150 a seat, next season if he moves to the seats designated as comparable to his Shea seats.

“Imagine how you’d feel if $300 goes to waste when they’re out of it in September,” he said.

The Mets have so far not agreed to let him downgrade to less expensive seats and he fears that if he goes on a waiting list, he may lose out entirely in relocating to Citi Field.

Howard said that some downgrade requests are easier to fulfill than others, as fans with seats at Shea that are comparable to the less-expensive ones sought by Mermelstein are served first. He also said that partial season-ticket plans might not survive.

“We’ve told our customers that if they want priority seating, they should have a full-season plan,” Howard said.

Season-ticket holders of the four teams said they were contemplating various strategies to cope.

Some, like Mermelstein, want to downgrade — or else drop their tickets.

Some, like Honig, want to flip some of their seat licenses for a profit — after holding them for the required minimum of one year — to pay for the remaining ones.

Some are seeking partners to shoulder the costs.

One public-relations executive in Manhattan, whose company did not permit him to speak publicly, was faced with a $120,000 bill for his six Giants seat licenses. He sold four of them to a major financial services executive for $30,000 each, a 50 percent markup. He retained two licenses, and has an option to buy back one of his partner’s licenses at market value.

Others, already sophisticated about reselling tickets on sites like stubhub.com, will try to recoup even more money by reselling tickets to attractive games.

Richie Brown of Manhattan, a uniform salesman, holds four fourth-row seats on the first-base side at Yankee Stadium that are jumping to $650 apiece from $220.

“It’s going to cost $2,600 to sit there on a rainy day in April to watch Kansas City,” he said. “You sit there saying, maybe at $220, you have a chance of selling them to somebody, but try selling four tickets at $650 each.”

Mark S. Rosentraub, a professor of urban affairs at Cleveland State University and an expert in sports finances, said that new-stadium economics were forcing fans to become smart, well-organized ticket brokers.

“You’ll have to put together packages where you sell your Royals tickets at a loss but hope you make it back on your Red Sox tickets,” he said. “If you’re used to seeing the Red Sox nine times, maybe now it’ll be four or five times.”

He said the Yankees, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets would not be setting their seat license and ticket prices so high without having studied data about the market from sources like StubHub. The Giants’ Mara offered a blunt lesson in market-driven economics on WFAN radio this month. “We have 130,000 people on our waiting list,” he said. “We could charge anything and still fill the stadium.”

The Nyack Rotary Club, with four Giants season tickets bequeathed to it by a member, faces an unusual problem. It raffles off the tickets to raise funds for scholarships and local elementary school literacy programs. Now, faced with paying seat licenses of $20,000 each, Christopher Haera, a former club president, said, “It seems odd to take out a loan to do a fund-raiser, and you don’t want to do a fund-raiser to do a fund-raiser."

Few fans have a broader view of season tickets than Aldo Zu-ppichini, who spends six figures annually to see the Yankees, the Giants, the Jets, the Knicks and the Rangers. He is giving up his football tickets (“I’ve got a 65-inch flat screen”) and has traded down to $135 seats in the Terrace Suite (“a fancy name for the upper deck”) at the new Yankee Stadium rather than pay $650 a game to watch Derek Jeter.

Zuppichini, a resident of Fort Lee, N.J., who is the vice president for sales for Pretzel Crisps, reluctantly signed a 10-year contract for the $135 seats, with built-in annual ticket price increases of 4 percent a year.

“You can’t be any more die-hard then me,” he said, “but when the Giants’ P.S.L. letter came in, I was so burned, I read half of it and threw it away.”

Feeling more betrayed is Irwin Shivek, of Boynton Beach, Fla. He bought his first two Giants season tickets back in 1946, doing so “over the counter” from Jack Mara, John’s uncle, at the team’s old business offices on 42nd Street in Manhattan.

In time, Shivek added two more season tickets and ended up in one of the Giants Stadium sections that make up the Coach’s Club at the new stadium, where seat licenses cost $20,000 and game tickets go for $700 each. The Giants say they are priced at that level because of their location behind the Giants’ bench, and because they provide access to a club that will provide free food and beverages and the ability to watch post-game interviews.

In 1989, Shivek moved from Secaucus, N.J., to Florida, and gave his tickets to his daughters, Susan and Lynn (whose middle name is Mara, a show of the family’s allegiance to the Giants). Susan and her husband will pay the new bill — $40,000 for two licenses and $14,000 for their season tickets, starting in 2010. But Lynn cannot.

“If the tickets were still in my name, I’d tear them up,” said Shivek, a former executive at Syms, the clothing chain. “If they couldn’t afford to finance that stadium on their own, they shouldn’t be leaving Giants Stadium.”

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

Bitter aftertaste for Willets Point spice business from redevelopment
Bitter aftertaste for Willets Point spice business from redevelopment

BY JESS WISLOSKI and JOHN LAUINGER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, August 25th 2008, 7:13 PM


Farriella for News

Worker Dalwinder Kaur stirs mawa at House of Spices, which now faces eviction due to redevelopment plans.

When Neli Soni moved his family's Indian food distribution business to Willets Point almost two decades ago, he never could have imagined the painful irony the city had in store.

Back in 1989, the city used tax incentives and a low-cost loan to lure the business, House of Spices, to the gritty industrial zone near Shea Stadium.

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO SLIDESHOW ON REZONING

The Willets Point location, near several major highways, helped House of Spices grow into the country's largest manufacturer and distributor of Indian and Pakistani foods.

But now, 19 years later, the city is threatening to uproot House of Spices and roughly 260 other Willets Point businesses so the area can be redeveloped into a glitzy realm of residences, stores and a hotel.

"It's just very ironic," Soni said, noting that the financial package the city offered House of Spices in 1989 required the company to grow its workforce.

"We successfully did that," he said, explaining that the company added 70 jobs.

Mayor Bloomberg's controversial plan to redevelop the 62-acre industrial zone - possibly using eminent domain - is the latest example of policies promoting residential and commercial uses at the expense of industrial uses.

Since Bloomberg took office in 2002, the city has rezoned or has proposed to rezone roughly 20% of manufacturing districts, according to the Pratt Center for Community Development.

The numbers are not as stark in Queens, where 355 of 3,333 manufacturing acres have been rezoned, with 162 more acres proposed for changes.

Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Lieber said the city must clean up the former coal-ash dump, which developed in hodgepodge fashion without sewers or storm drains.

"This is first and foremost a remediation," Lieber said during a recent speech at Queens Borough Hall, noting that the project will create 5,300 permanent jobs. "This is an area that is sorely in need of being cleaned up."

But Soni said the city's grand plan for Willets Point has jeopardized House of Spices' future in New York - and caused him to shelve $1 million in capital improvements to his operation.

"It sends the wrong signal to nonFortune 500 companies," he said, noting that morale is declining among his workers - and many have started looking for other jobs. "I don't see them supporting manufacturing in any way."

Soni said he wants to stay in the city. But while the city keeps him in limbo, he is looking at land in New Jersey, where manufacturing space costs between $6 and $8 per square foot, compared with between $20 to $25 per square foot in the five boroughs.

"The cost of doing manufacturing in New York City is very high," he said.

jwisloski@nydailynews.com

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

City industries feel squeeze with rezoning attracting developers
City industries feel squeeze with rezoning attracting developers

BY JESS WISLOSKI and JOHN LAUINGER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, August 25th 2008, 7:38 PM


Farriella for News

Neil Soni, vice president of House of Spices, faces eviction due to the planned commercial development of the area.

In the battle for buildable land in New York City, factories and warehouses are losing out to glitzy residential towers and commercial developments - and city policies are tipping the scales.

When Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, there were 12,542 acres in the city where manufacturers could set up shop.

If the latest round of proposed zoning changes goes through, the Bloomberg administration will have rezoned 20% of that factory-friendly land, according to a study by the Pratt Center for Community Development obtained exclusively by the Daily News.

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO SLIDESHOW ON REZONING
"The Bloomberg administration had a strategic plan from the beginning - to rezone or redevelop manufacturing areas to promote, originally, office space," said Pratt Center Executive Director Brad Lander.

"But it's worked out to be almost entirely residential development," he said. "There's a real concern it's gone too far."

More than 20 Bloomberg rezonings have converted manufacturing land into residential or commercial uses, transforming neighborhoods like Red Hook, Long Island City and the South Bronx into trendy residential addresses.

Seth Pinsky, head of the city Economic Development Corp., said many of the rezonings, in Brooklyn's Greenpoint and Williamsburg for example, sought better uses for run-down, largely vacant manufacturing sites.

Pinsky and Planning Department officials said manufacturing land has been reduced by only 11%, arguing that the Pratt study excluded land operated by utilities and airports, which provide numerous jobs.

But the Pratt Center counted them out because other manufacturers can't move to those areas.

The dwindling stock of manufacturing space has made already pricey land more expensive, Lander said. Many factories grandfathered in after rezonings soon seek cheaper options elsewhere, such as New Jersey - leading to the loss of well-paying blue-collar jobs.

A News analysis of state labor statistics shows the city's industrial sector has lost more than 37,000 jobs since Bloomberg took office. City officials said the number is slightly above 31,000.

To protect manufacturing, Pinsky said the city took 16 of the most productive industrial areas in the five boroughs and turned them into special industrial business zones, or IBZs - and pledged not to rezone them.

And during Bloomberg's tenure, the Industrial Development Agency has doled out $522 million in tax incentives and low-interest loans to grow and retain about $8.8 billion in business.

But only $26 million of those incentives has gone to industrial firms, while a staggering $274 million has been awarded for commercial projects, according to a News analysis of city records.

Maureen Babis, head of the city's Industrial Development Agency, challenged those numbers, saying the city has given $68 million to manufacturing companies in addition to $328 million in tax freezes.

Pinsky said federal guidelines for IDA money severely restrict the amount of tax-exempt bonds that can be given to industrial versus commercial developments.

The city has taken steps to encourage manufacturing, such as fostering business on city-owned land.

Still, the city has shed 6% of its industrial sector jobs since Bloomberg took office, compared with 3% nationwide.

But Pinsky said that is a "significant accomplishment" compared with 1985 to 2001, when the city lost 28% of its industrial jobs.

"We've managed to stabilize this sector of our economy which [previous] administrations have not been able to do for decades," he said, noting the city gained 1,700 industrial jobs last month alone.

jlauinger@nydailynews.com

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.

TalB

Voice of the People for Aug. 27, 2008
Rabid defense

East Elmhurst: The Daily News called me a junkyard dog (Aug. 18 editorial) because I oppose the mayor's inadequate Willets Point plan. As a fighter for my district, I accept the title. But I won't be a lap dog. With a collaborative approach, we could develop a plan acceptable to the residents, owners, workers and elected officials who demand responsible development: a cap on the use of eminent domain, more than 50% of the housing for low- and middle-income residents, and a developer with whom the community can negotiate.

Councilman Hiram Monserrate

__________________
I have respected your views, so I expect you to do the same for me.