Yankees to build new stadium.
It's political, I tell ya.
Steinbrenner is some shrewdie. He is even going to pay for the stadium himself.
Sort of.
The Yankees will in fact pay the 700 million for a new stadium. The city and state would have to pay a few hundred million for things like road improvements, train stations.
Now here's the political part. When Guiliani was mayor he tried to get the City of New York to pay half of 800 million for a new stadium for the Yanks. And just to be fair he also wanted to build one for the Mets, same deal.
The city wouldn't go for it.
Now Bloomberg is mayor. He has maybe the lowest approval rating of any politician in America. So Steinbrenner comes up with the idea to pay for the stadium himself. Of course the city and state must still pay hundreds of millions but the voters are thinking he saved them 800 million dollars. This helps out Bloomberg for the election and then Bloomy owes him big time. Like getting him to help fight Cablesvison (another story)
So is Steinbrenner doing this just to get some goodwill with the mayor who may not even be re-elected?
Nah.
Turns out in baseball if your team salary is over a certain amount you have to pay a "luxury" tax. The money collected from these high salary teams goes to the teams with lower salaries (and revenues) so they can compete with the big guys. Currently the Yanks pay 60 million a year.
BUT
Steinbrenner is financing the new stadium (tax-free munincipal bonds of course).
And he will pay about 40 million a year to pay off the bonds.
And baseball says that's an expense. Which reduces his teams expenses (salary). So now instead of giving the 40 million to the poor teams he uses it to pay off a stadium he will own. Costs him nothing and he gets to own the stadium.
What a country!
