I know it’s long-since been a dead topic, but I walked by the West Side Yards this morning and the old Yankee/Olympic stadium debacle flooded into my mind.
For those of you who’ve never been by the area, you should go take a look, especially if you are pro-stadium. There’s absolutely no room there! Oh, sure, they could build the stadium and it would fit, but we’re currently dealing with traffic issue after traffic issue, with the MTA whining again that it cannot handle the perceived growth in commuter load in the next decade. Still, the answer to a new home for the Yankees (paid for mostly by us, of course, not the millionaire owner of the team) was to put it in midtown Manhattan with small streets guaranteed to cause epic congestion. The answer to the public transit issue was to extend the 7 train one stop from 42nd St.
The entire proposition is wholly laughable the minute you walk to the West Side Yard and see the potential for disaster yourself.
The West Side’s currently going through that makeover prevalent in every neighborhood in Manhattan right now in that high-rise after high-rise is popping up where once used to be warehouses and junk yards. I’m not a big fan of that either but it’s certainly not the debacle that a stadium clogging up tiny Manhattan would have been.

[image from spotteddogs.org]