Yankees, Stay Home!

Instead of preparing the Hogi Factory for another day's business, the owner of the venerable sandwich shop and father of 12, Pasquale Canale, spent last Friday morning outside City Hall protesting the new Yankee Stadium proposal. Despite the assurances from city's politicians that it is he-the typical local small-business owner-they are looking out for, he is trying to send a message to the City Council's Bronx Delegation that no monetary gains can justify the seizure of local parks.

On April 5, the council will vote whether or not to approve the Yankees' bid to snatch up acres of public parks to build a brand new $800 million stadium across the street from the current one. "These elected officials think they can just sell the Bronx," Canale said. "This project continues to go forward with absolutely no community input."

Local politicians have ensured the community's voice remains unheard at every step of the project's path through local and state government. In just eight days, however, this huge structure was shepherded through Albany's mass of bureaucratic red tape, in an uncharacteristically efficient legislative action to navigate the reprisal of public land for private use. Both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. have been unabashed about their support of the project despite the local Community Board voting overwhelmingly against the proposal. But the board serves only an advisory capacity, and politicians are under no obligation to follow its suggestions.

In the poorest Congressional district in the country, local residents are fighting against one of the richest franchises in professional sports. Joyce Hogi, a longtime resident, sounded off at the recent protest and lambasted both the Yankees and their supporters at City Hall. "We voted our elected officials in to serve our best interest, but we are getting no consideration here," she said. "It's been proven that time and again, parks improve communities while stadiums do not. The Yankees haven't done anything positive for our neighborhood. It's disgraceful how our community is being destroyed."

Dubbed "Asthma Alley" because of its poor air quality and resulting health effects, Highbridge is perhaps one of the last communities that should face losing its parkland. Residents face constant traffic jams and excess garbage when the Yankee fans converge on the area six months out of the year.

Earlier this year, they were slapped with another development project when the council approved the Gateway Center to replace the Bronx Terminal Market. Now the community is being asked to welcome a massive construction project on top of the two largest parks in the community all so the Yankees do not have to consider the possibility of tearing down the current stadium and building in its footprints.

With residents believing they're being fed spoonfuls of emotional rhetoric from their local elected officials and little else, Jeffrey Croft, the founder and president of New York City Park Advocates, has been fighting the proposal since its inception. "The community has been completely excluded from any types of negotiation. It's all been done completely back door," he said. "This is not a surprise with Bronx politics. It's amazing how elected officials get away with this. The bottom line is the community is getting screwed."

Carrion, who is planning a mayoral bid in 2009, began to cool on the project last week as the opposition to the new stadium grew louder. In a prepared statement, he outlined commercial developments and economic benefits associated with the project. "The host community will be a partner in the development of this area," he insisted.

Yet the language around the proposal has not named the community as a partner at all, but instead has enlisted a "community benefits" program, which will set up a slush fund, worth $50 million over 40 years, for the Council to dole out at its discretion.

This language allows for the possibility that this money could wind up in communities completely unaffected by the new stadium. When the project is explained in these terms, it becomes harder to understand why it continues to gain support from the city's politicians.

Unsurprisingly, the New Bronx Chamber of Commerce has been one of the only local organizations supporting the proposal. The group's vice president, Lenny Caro, bluntly stated, "We understand the plight of the neighborhood, but we are not a civic association. We are for business and commerce."

Last week, to protect the proposal from further criticism, Bloomberg cancelled a Public Accountability Forum, scheduled months ago, thus robbing the community of its final effort to speak. In response, Croft and residents organized their own public demonstration the same evening.

Recently, Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, whose district the stadium sits in, has absorbed much of the backlash from her community for acquiescing to the proposal without consideration for alternatives. "It's difficult for me to understand the community's perception on this project," said Arroyo, whose mother Maria Arroyo introduced the proposal into the Assembly last year.

She denied the stadium deal was going down in any underhanded way, adding, "When the Bronx Delegation and the Bloomberg Administration meet behind closed doors, that's us doing our job."

The new stadium and Gateway Center were not ushered in to help current residents, who claim that these projects are meant to tout the South Bronx (dubbed "SoBro" by the Times) as the next Harlem or Williamsburg and will only benefit a new class of people being attracted to the area.

With Carrion urging development deals and Arroyo accepting them, the efforts of Canale and others may prove ultimately inconsequential as they face the inevitable prospect of surrendering their neighborhood to New York City's politics of big business first. Not for the first time, the poor aren't being heard.