Condemned to Repeat It?

Talk about fuzzy math. In June, a city report concluded that the proposed West Side stadium would actually lower traffic in Manhattan, since it would cut down on cars heading to the Meadowlands. In March 2004, the Post reported that the Olympics' estimated cost of $3.6 billion, as calculated by the city, did not include the Jets arena, an Olympic Village in Long Island City and myriad other yet-to-be-built facilities that would push the cost past $12 billion. (The official figure was grudgingly adjusted to $7.2 billion.) New York's true financial commitment remains a mystery, since Mayor Bloomberg refuses to release the official agreement he submitted to the IOC on November 15.

In Bloomberg's obfuscations, one hears whispers of a bygone event justified with similarly vague, overly optimistic financial projections: the 1964 World's Fair, the 40th anniversary of which just passed with little fanfare. Though remembered fondly by many New Yorkers, the fair was a fiscal failure, a civic embarrassment and a fitting end to one man's long, checkered career. Our current mayor could learn a lot from the collapse of the World's Fair, a far less ambitious project in a far more favorable economic climate.

New York's last World's Fair was helmed by Robert Moses, the legendary Parks Commissioner and Triborough Authority president whose unparalleled political clout and civic hubris built just about every park, beach and highway in the city. He hoped to cap his career by transforming the fairground at Flushing Meadows into a greenspace that would rival Central Park in popularity and grandeur; to him, the World's Fair was a means to this end. Like the Olympics, the fair was pitched to the public as a cash cow for the city's coffers. In fact, the cream went to thousands of service contracts, freely granted to Moses' many political allies. Its true costs, astronomical for their era, were kept mostly secret from the public-$1 billion from government and private sources, with an additional $60 million squeezed out of the city before opening day.

Under the banner "Peace through Understanding," pavilions were forced to use Moses' handpicked service firms, all of whom gouged the exhibitors with grossly inflated rates. The New York Times reported that when the Spanish pavilion tried to hire its own clean-up crew, Allied Maintenance (owner of the sanitation concession) refused to pick up its garbage for four days, then threatened to strew the trash all over their exhibition in retaliation for the rebellion.

By placing the fair far from public transportation and maintaining high admission prices, Moses aimed the event squarely at tourists and well-heeled locals at the expense of working-class New Yorkers. This would prove costly; despite the acres of cash raked in by Moses ($1 million in salary and incentives) and his cronies, the first year's attendance fell far short of the numbers necessary to stay out of the red. An accounting error held $15 million in pre-sales for year two against operating expenses for year one, rendering the fair virtually bankrupt by January 1965. When year two drew to a close, it was clear the fair would never be able to repay its debts, and that Moses' dream of a great park in Flushing Meadows would remain unfulfilled.

To compare Michael Bloomberg to Robert Moses ascribes to the current mayor an infamy he doesn't (yet) deserve. But like Moses' fair, Bloomberg's Olympic dreams are little more than a smokescreen for a feeding frenzy at city troughs. Proponents of the plan continue to bill the Jets stadium as a lucrative sports arena and convention center, even though a physical link between the stadium and the Javits Center was nixed in 2002. Even if the link were still a part of the plan, as the New York Times noted this June, "no other similar stadium has attracted anywhere near as many events as the Jets are predicting."

In truth, the Jets stadium is but one piece of a developer's wet dream on the far west side that includes an expanded Javits Center and the "Hudson Yards" redevelopment of 59 square blocks from 30th to 43rd Sts.

Bloomberg continues to hope that by attaching these projects to something as soul-stirring as the Olympics, he can sway public opinion. Similar tactics are being employed by Bruce Ratner in the stalled push for a proposed basketball arena in downtown Brooklyn, and in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, where developers have grafted Olympic facilities onto their luxury high-rise dreams for the waterfront. An unprecedented 10-year "no strike" pledge from the city's powerful construction unions indicates the length of the Olympic gravy train.

Remnants of the 1964 World's Fair still stand in Flushing, many of them crumbling hulks, like the towers of the New York State Pavilion that can be seen from the Van Wyck Expressway. Snarls of weeds now crack through its concrete floor, once painted with a map of New York, and over which hung an enormous canopy nicknamed the "Tent of Tomorrow." Philip Johnson, one of its architects, said he cringed each time he passed it on the highway. If he's following the west-side saga from retirement, he's probably cringing still.