ARCHIVES OF THE MAYOR'S WEEKLY COLUMN Archives of Rudolph W. Giuliani

A West Side Stadium Would Make the City More Competitive and Create More Jobs

Over the past seven years, my administration has restored fiscal stability to New York City. Through sound fiscal management we have controlled City spending, cut taxes, created thousands of new jobs, reduced crime and the welfare rolls, and made New York City a friendlier place for businesses to grow and prosper. Wall Street has been instrumental in helping to create budget surpluses for the City, but we can’t always count on the economy functioning the way it is right now.

My administration has been taking advantage of the good times by facilitating more construction projects than the city has seen in 40 years. If we’re really interested in economic development for the city, we have to keep doing new things that are going to add to the base. The critical thing that New York City needs that will help us years from now is a real convention center. The Javits convention center is a misnomer – it’s not a convention center, it’s an exhibition hall. It was not built to allow for a large gathering of people to watch an event.

Our problem is that we can’t put more than 20,000 people in an auditorium in New York City. The largest is Madison Square Garden and that seats a little under 20,000. We lose a tremendous amount of business as a result of not having a real convention center, which would allow us to host gatherings of 50,000 or more people who can sit indoors, even during cold or rainy weather. New York could then host the large conventions that right now we can’t compete for.

A large convention center would be a very big investment in more jobs in the city. In my 1999 State of the City Address I first proposed a large indoor convention sports arena on the West Side of Manhattan because I knew what it could do for the economy of this city. It will be able to do for the West Side what Lincoln Center has done for the Upper West Side; what Disney has done for 42nd Street; what the Lower Manhattan Revitalization Plan and keeping the Stock Exchange and the Mercantile Exchange have done for Wall Street. It will allow us to compete for business that we lose to other cities all over the country, and produce jobs for New Yorkers well into the future. And it will also revitalize one of the most underutilized areas of the city.

The key thing that makes this a sensible proposal for the City is that a stadium, built on State-owned land on the West Side rail yards from 30th to 34th Street, wouldn’t be used solely as a sports facility. An indoor arena with a retractable dome that could seat up to 100,000 people could be used for conventions, concerts, and other large events. And the greatest city in the world should have a venue capable of hosting world-class events. Without such a facility, we are losing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in business, and the jobs that go with it.

Just think about the major athletic events like the NCAA Final Four and the Super Bowl that we lose to places like Indianapolis because we lack a suitable venue. We are depriving our hotels of thousands of guests -- and that hurts a city for which tourism is a vital industry. The construction of a West Side stadium could keep the City moving in the right direction for a very long time. It would also mean a lot of economic development, because if we get the Olympics in 2012, that would not only affect Manhattan, but the whole metropolitan area would be used as a venue for the Games.

It would be important to have at least one major ongoing occupant at the proposed arena, and if it were the Jets, that would be terrific. But the most important thing for the City is to acquire a true convention center. This is all in the discussion and proposal stage, but if we can work it out it would be a great victory for the city. It is part of my job to promote the economic development of New York, and it is exciting projects like this one that keeps our city growing and New Yorkers working.