The Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association (HKNA), elected officials and the West Side community group filed a law suit Monday in New York State Supreme Court against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to block the sale of the agency’s rail yard to the Jets for a new stadium, which would be the centrepiece of the New York 2012 Summer Olympic Games, should it win the bid.
The HKNA is the community coalition opposed to the West Side Stadium and is composed of all the neighbourhood’s local elected officials, Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton, and Chelsea’s major community organizations, and more than two thousand volunteers and activists.
The suit claims the MTA Board “violated their statutory and fiduciary duties as well as the public trust” in awarding the highly priced development rights to the New York Jets for a $250 million bid, despite competing bids that were worth hundreds of millions of dollars more to the cash strapped agency.
The suit also claims the bid process was “neither fair nor open, conducted under questionable ethical standards, engendered a total lack of public confidence in the MTA and its public officials”, and “was not in the best interest of the taxpaying public”.
Madison Square Garden, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and several transit watchdog and good-government groups separately filed earlier legal challenges to the MTA’s sale.
A state Supreme Court judge has set a May 3 hearing on the lawsuit filed by Madison Square Garden.
