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   From: drooler@gmail.com   
      
   If you thought Mayor de Blasio’s inept governance of our city couldn’t get   
   any worse in his  administration’s waning days, think again.   
      
   A consortium of businesses working with the New York Yankees handed the   
   city a $1 billion development plan for a blighted South Bronx   
   neighborhood, and the geniuses in City Hall have all but killed it.   
      
   The culprit: parking spaces. That’s right. Parking spaces.   
      
   Of course, the utter idiocy of the people who run the city is seen every   
   day on our increasingly crime-ridden streets, in out-of-control   
   homelessness, and the general decay of civil society here in the Big   
   Apple. Less visible is the incompetence of the city’s ­bureaucrats who   
   deal with the business community.   
      
   It goes without saying that without entrepreneurs and bankers, real-estate   
   moguls and restaurateurs, New York City wouldn’t be the great metropolis   
   it is. So when business leaders provide City Hall with a win-win — housing   
   and jobs for poor people, the redevelopment of one of the poorest   
   neighborhoods in the country, on top of taxable income, it’s imperative   
   that we have people in government who jump at these types of   
   opportunities.   
      
   We don’t, sadly, which is why the demise of this plan, eight years in the   
   making, is such a painful, albeit necessary story to tell.   
      
   It’s also a case study about why the end of the de Blasio administration   
   can’t come fast enough.   
      
   The story begins in 2006 with the groundbreaking on the new Yankee Stadium   
   in the South Bronx. The Bloomberg administration agreed to provide the   
   team a little more than 9,000 parking spaces for fans, and keep several   
   lots that are in walking distance of the stadium in “first class”   
   condition.   
      
   Over time, Yankee fans increasingly took public transportation to the   
   game, either subway or Metro North, because it’s an easy commute, but also   
   because the city-approved agency running the lots, the Bronx Parking   
   Development Corp., does such a lousy job at upkeep. “First class” soon   
   fell to second, third and now a lot worse for a chunk of the area, Yankees   
   officials tell me.   
      
   Today, some of the spaces are cluttered with trash and have attracted   
   vermin. They’re used to park taxis, which wasn’t an intended use, and team   
   executives believe they’re also possibly used as a chop shop. Parking   
   revenue is almost nonexistent and more than $200 million in ­municipal   
   bonds that financed the lots’ construction are in default.   
      
   Yankees President Randy Levine, a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani   
   administration, thought he had the solution.   
      
   The Yankees are part-owner of a professional soccer team, New York City   
   FC, which needed its own stadium. Levine needed community buy-in to   
   approve the plan to build the soccer stadium on land adjacent to the   
   ballpark, which was occupied by those crummy garages.   
      
   He put together a package that appeared to satisfy everyone. In exchange   
   for approval for the soccer stadium, he agreed to build a new school,   
   affordable housing and other facilities on land occupied by some of the   
   garages. He did it with private money. Thousands of jobs in the South   
   Bronx would be created.   
      
   The bondholders, an important constituency since they technically control   
   the parking facilities in ­default, get a $50 million lifeline. The city,   
   another important constituency because it’s owed back taxes on the   
   defaulted lots, would start to recoup some of its losses as well.   
      
   The only hitch involved that parking stuff I mentioned before. The Yankees   
   wanted a real guarantee of first-class parking of around 5,000 parking   
   spaces (down from its initial deal for 9,000-plus) on the remaining lots.   
      
   Seems like a reasonable ask, right? The city and the bondholders actually   
   agreed to the spaces in a term sheet signed by both parties last year.   
      
   But as the project was nearing a ­final community-board approval in recent   
   weeks, something weird happened: The city got cold feet over the guarantee   
   for those annoying first-class parking spaces.   
      
   So did bondholders, led by the investment firm Nuveen, who thought it was   
   somehow odd that the Yankees would put together a multilayered plan that   
   paid them $50 million and ask for something in exchange.   
      
   The city broke the news to Levine about two weeks ago that, despite   
   earlier assurances, there will be no parking-space guarantees, flushing a   
   $1 billion project down the crapper.   
      
   It’s just one of the many development projects that have been derailed by   
   a de Blasio administration that is either inept or anti-business. From the   
   rejected Amazon headquarters in Queens on down, how many chances to   
   revitalize New York have we missed?   
      
   City officials say it was Levine who blew the deal up by asking for a   
   “legal” guarantee for parking that they couldn’t agree on because they   
   might someday get sued if they didn’t live up to their end of the bargain.   
   They say the deal isn’t totally dead and could be revived through some   
   sort of compromise. Levine says he’s “perplexed” by the city’s response   
   since the bonds to build those lots were issued to guarantee Yankees fan   
   parking in the first place.   
      
   Let’s hope something is worked out, because consider what the city walked   
   away from: A $1 billion project, and thousands of jobs in one of its   
   poorest areas, all over a few “guaranteed” parking spaces.   
      
   https://nypost.com/2021/07/03/incompetent-de-blasio-team-whiffs-on-1-   
   billion-bronx-boost/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)