Madison Square Garden announced Friday it was offering $600 million for the property where the New York Jets want to build a stadium, which is pivotal to New York’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The amount is nearly twice as much the New York Jets were asked to pay.
New York’s Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said in a statement that Madison Square Garden’s offer was “a desperate, last minute attempt to derail a project that will create thousands of jobs, more than $1 billion in tax revenue and allow New York to realize its Olympic dreams by building a world class sports and convention centre.”
He added, “a Friday afternoon press release doesn’t replace years of planning, design, negotiation, and public review from which this project has benefited”.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports the stadium and has warned that the Olympic bid will be doomed without it.
The Journal News reports that earlier Friday Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Games, had been asked what advice he would give to get the West Side stadium off the ground.
At a breakfast forum the governor talked about the merits of New York’s bid and said, no stadium approval, no Olympics in 2012.
Following his speech Romney told reporters that the approvals don’t need to be completed prior to the IOC visit. There are two hurdles left at the state level and two lawsuits are pending.
Romney said, “the key timing is the time of the vote of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). If major unresolved issues have been put to bed before July, then I think New York has the leading edge in being able to win the upcoming bid”.
The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Evaluation Commission will be inspecting New York’s 2012 bid February 21-24.
