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Report: NYCFC submits proposal for stadium site near Yankee Stadium

New York City FC Unveil_Levine_Garber_Soriano

By DAN KARELL

If all goes to plan, New York City FC could be neighbors with the New York Yankees.

The Major League Baseball club, who is part owner of NYC FC with Manchester City of the English Premier League, have submitted a new proposal for a soccer-specific stadium that would be located just south of the new Yankee Stadium, according to a report in the New York Times.

The report states that the NYC FC executives are looking to build a 25,000 to 30,000 seat arena that would be close to public transportation and would not take up any parkland. The club is also interested in building the stadium in an area where there are already a large number of soccer fans.

“We’ve had preliminary discussions,” President of the Yankees Randy Levine said to the Times, “but we’re a long way from any decision. We’re also considering sites in Queens and Brooklyn.”

MLS, after working for more than a year to secure a stadium in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, backed out of that proposed site once the NYC FC franchise was announced in May, instead deciding that it would be up to the new club’s ownership to find and build a stadium.

The potential Bronx site is a seemingly complicated project, not too different to the challenges facing D.C. United. NYC FC is looking at a nine acre swath of land to build their stadium, and currently on the proposed land site sit a parking lot, which is crucial for Yankees games as there isn’t much parking in the area, as well as a 100,000 square foot factory and a highway ramp to enter the Major Deegan Expressway.

Levine said that NYC FC wouldn’t played on the same day as Yankees home games, though it could become an issue with mid-week CONCACAF Champions League and U.S. Open Cup games once the team finally begins play in 2015.

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What do you think of this report? Do you like this site for a soccer stadium? Do you see NYC FC successfully acquiring the land? Do you see the club using another site in NYC instead?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. The Bronx is my cultural homeland. It’s where I want the stadium.

    Manhattan. of course, is The City and would be cool.

    Brooklyn I can live with.

    As far as I’m concerned, Queens is Baja Long Island

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  2. Red BUll is new jersey and should rebrand to Red Bull New Jersey or Red Bull New Yorksey.
    NYCFC should be in the bronx or even brooklyn and leave queens to cosmos. This is gonna be a fun expansion ride for MLS. I wish MLS does 26 to 28 teams and has single table in each conference and winners of each single table play in a two leg series MLS Cup.

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  3. It’s unfortunate for Don Garber that he has gotten into bed with Randy Levine, the clown shoe who is running the Yankees into the ground. Ask any hardcore Yankee fan what they think of Randy Levine and you will learn that he is basically the personification of George Steinbrenner’s idiocy prior to his suspension from baseball in 1990. It was only after that suspension that George struck a better balance that allowed smart people to build the 1996-2001 dynasty while he aggressively funded the operation with a more background baseball decision role. Levine is the jackass version without any of the bombastic charm.

    The upshot of them going in the Bronx would mean it gives more room for the New York Cosmos, the region’s authentic non-corporate brand extension team, to flourish on the edge of Queens in their Elmont stadium. Boom.

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    • Agreed with everything until you said the Cosmos are an “authentic non-corporate brand extension team.” The entire Cosmos 2.0 experiment is 100% branding and 0% about soccer.

      Regarding the Yankees and Randy Levine, you are totally correct, he’s a buffoon. I wouldn’t say the Yankees have been run into the ground though. Before this year, they were very successful. Might be time to cut some ticket prices though. Current prices are outrageous.

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      • The Kemsley crew were the brand guys first and foremost, the new guys are about building a good soccer club first and foremost. Of course you don’t revive the Cosmos without valuing their brand cache. But it’s a totally different emphasis now than with Kemsley, who to his credit for a business point of view basically arbitraged his way to a nice profit. That being said my problem isn’t with an authentic New York soccer brand like the Cosmos, but the brand extensions that the Red Bulls and City represent. Just to clarify what I meant there.

  4. Don’t think this is a good move. Stadium really needs to be in Queens, Brooklyn, or Manhattan (Randall’s Island?) for the team to have a chance of drawing well. Queens and Brooklyn both have the most diversfied, middle class populations that would be best suited to supporting a soccer team, while a Manhattan location would probably be the most convenient for people to get to from other boroughs. Yes, people flock to the Bronx to attend Yankee games but that won’t carry over to New York City FC. That’s akin to arguing that since the Giants sell out the Meadowlands, the Red Bulls should be able to do the same in Harrison. A waterfront location in Brooklyn or Queens would be ideal.

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  5. The location is right next to the East 153rd Street stop on the Metro North line and maybe three blocks from the Subway stop. Definitely easy to get to without a car.

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  6. I think the Soccer Don got a little nervous when the Cosmos became a reality, NYCFC seems to be a bit rushed but hopefully it works out in the end.

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  7. “The Major League Baseball club, who is part owner of NYC FC with Manchester City of the English Premier League, have submitted a new proposal for a soccer-specific stadium that would be located just south of the new Yankee Stadium…The club is also interested in building the stadium in an area where there are already a large number of soccer fans.”

    This is a terrible idea! For those of you not familiar with the South Bronx, they are counting on you not realizing that the majority of residents are Dominican and Puerto Ricans that seems to put the two statements in conflict with one another. The soccer fans in NYC are in Brooklyn and Queens which is why the original proposal made much more sense if not for Mets undermining and blocking the Queens proposal.

    Ironically, it looks like the Cosmos now have the best proposed site because for me I aint going to the Bronx for a soccer match. I would go to Queens but not the Bronx.

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  8. Don’t really like the idea of another NYC based team. Red Bulls get 60% of their fans from NJ. Haven’t seen the break down from where the other 40% come from. However, I assume its mainly from NY. If Red Bulls lose 15% of their fans that would be 2k-3k fans per game. Thats significant.

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      • Regardless of the fact that I’m a Red Bulls fan, I must remain fair and impartial in this respect. That fact of yours means nothing. Manhattan is but ONE OF FIVE boroughs, a distinction which the Bronx also shares. Whether or not RBA is closer to Manhattan than Yankee Stadium becomes irrelevant to that argument since the Bronx *IS* a part of NYC.

        I wish we could be rebranded back to being the Metrostars =

      • It doesn’t mean nothing. It means that “NYC based” is mostly semantics. Going to the Bronx isn’t any better than going to Harrison.

      • The Bronx is part of NYC but RBA is closer to most NYC than the Bronx. It’s easier/faster to reach RBA from Brooklyn/Queens (at least by public transit) then the Bronx.

    • Marketing costs in NYC are enormous. The idea is putting a second team in the area will lift both ships and create an intra-town rivalry (I know…).

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  9. It would be nearly impossible for NYCFC to not play during Yankee home games.The MLS and MLB season run almost concurrent and baseball teams play almost everyday.Dosent MLS make the schedule anyways, though they would probably acomidate one of their 3 big clubs.

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    • I’ve been to 15 or so Dynamo games in the last couple of years and they haven’t played the same night as the Astros once. It can be done.

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    • They’ve never been able to figure out how to allow the Galaxy to open thier entire stadium for big midweek playoff games, what makes you think they would figure this out?

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      • Isn’t that a little different? Doesn’t the LAG problem have to do with parking concerns for a state run university?

      • yes, it is a whole lot different. When given a lease on the land they agreed to cap the midweek night attendance during school. Nothing to figure out, it is part of the contract.

    • Also, remember that most weekend baseball games are played during the day. MLS can just schedule NYCFC matches for a nighttime kickoff.

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    • I am guessing a good arm could throw a baseball from my end of Sounder’s stadium and put it in the Mariner’s stadium…..The other part of that is it wouldn’t hit any fans, even during a game.

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  10. Hopefully the owners are serious enough to keep progress going. Great if they can pull it off in the Bronx area where many soccer fans are, but could also be potential for disaster if the owners “forget” about their across the pond franchise. Definitely do not want to see a Chivas USA type situation.

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    • There are many soccer fans in the Ironbound section near Red Bull Arena, but do they go to MLS matches? No.

      There is a big difference, particularly in the NY metro area, between a “soccer fan” and someone who will attend an MLS match.

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      • That’s such an odd dichotomy. “I love soccer, but I ONLY like to watch it on TV. Screw live games. Unless I’m on holiday in Europe.”

      • havent been to e RBNY game in a while so not sure of the prices, but the average soccer fan in the newark area cant afford to attend the games. they may want to, but can’t.

      • Yeah, that’s not true at all. People spend more money eating out on Saturday night than they would for a Red Bulls ticket.

      • Often puzzle me people are puzzled as to why no one goes to RB games. Could it simply be people don’t like ’em? Or are no allowed to dislike RB?

    • Casual Euro fans are always going to be a problem, but there are enough real soccer fans that don’t only watch “soccer at the highest level” and then make excuses about why.
      See Seattle. See Portland. See KC.

      LA is probably more applicable. Smaller percentage of interest, but huge numbers to start.

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  11. As I’ve said from the start, NYCFC is a terrible idea and that was before I knew it would be owned by human rights violators and would have no stadium. This team will be playing at Yankee Stadium for years.

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  12. Shouldn’t have the owners and the league make sure first that they have a stadium site locked up before formally establishing the franchise? Seeing as NYC isn’t exactly replete with vacant space, at this rate, NYC FC will find itself playing in Rockland County or something.

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    • when the backup plan is playing at Yankee Stadium (as opposed to an NFL stadium), it’s not too bad. 50,000 is still a lot of seats, but if they can get 30,000 in there, it won’t look terrible. and i think NYCFC will have much better support than NYRB.

      but we’ll see.

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