(ATR) New York's bid for the 2012 Olympics may be back in business with plans for a stadium in Queens to replace dashed plans for one in Manhattan. On Monday, NYC 2012 will ask the IOC Executive Board for permission to modify the bid.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a Sunday night press conference to announce the stadium proposal that could save the New York Olympic bid.
"We're fighting to keep this dream alive," said Bloomberg.
The new arena would be built next to the existing Shea Stadium, the home for the NY Mets Major League Baseball team for the past 40 years. The stadium, to be built by the Mets, would become the home ground for the team in 2009, and then go on to Olympic duty in 2012.
"New Yorkers have come together," says Bloomberg about the deal that was assembled in the past 72 hours.
Should New York win the Games, the Mets would vacate the new arena for the 2012 season and play their home games that year at Yankee Stadium, to which the Yankees have agreed. Cost of fitting out the stadium for the Olympics would be about $250 million, costs to be borne by the city and state.
"We're going all the way with this," NYC 2012 Executive Director Jay Kriegel tells Around the Rings, his voice bursting with enthusiasm in a telephone interview.
Kriegel says the formal change in venue plans will be submitted to the IOC June 13 as part of its formal response to last week's report of the 2012 Evaluation Commission.
Along with the request for the IOC to approve the change, Kriegel says representatives from the bid will meet with officials from FIFA and the IAAF this week to win their approval, which is necessary. The stadium will be site for athletics and the final for football.
The new stadium plan also means a new location for the Main Press Center and International Broadcast Center, which like plans for the rejected stadium, were located on Manhattan?s west side.
The new spot for MPC/IBC will be at Willet Points, a parcel of land already owned by the city next to Shea Stadium and the Olympic Park in Queens that already was planned to be the home for five other sports in the NYC 2012 bid.
"You can never count New Yorkers out," said Blooomberg.
Last Monday, the same day the 2012 Evaluation Commission report was released, a state of New York panel rejected plans for a stadium in Manhattan, essentially leaving the bid without a main stadium. The blow seemed fatal, especially without a backup stadium plan.
?We could have withdrawn from the Olympics, that would have been the easy thing to do,? said Bloomberg who then found an appropriate sports analogy to describe the situation.
We?re like the athlete that falls, dusts himself off and gets up,? he said.
There is no guarantee that the venue change will be approved by the Executive Board, an unprecedented move so close to the IOC vote, now just over three weeks away.
But in comments last week IOC President Jacques Rogge signaled that he expected that New York City would remain in the race through the July 6 vote in Singapore.
A statement from U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth and chief executive Jim Scherr congratulates the New York bid for coming up with an alternative.
"We applaud Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and the entire NYC2012 team for the determination and resolve they have shown in developing an alternative plan for the Olympic Stadium. Their can-do attitude typifies the American spirit and is emblematic of what the Olympic Movement is all about," say the USOC officials.
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