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The city's Olympic proposal is contingent upon building a stadium for the Jets on the site of the MTA rail yards on the west side of Manhattan. In the 11th hour Cablevision offered $600 million for the property, by far outbidding the Jets.
The Cablevision proposal has won the enthusiastic support of the Friends of the Snail Darter and other Manhattan elitists who claim that allowing the Jets to play in Manhattan will negatively impact quality of life. They say the stadium would cause massive traffic jams. Even if that were true, it would only affect the area on eight Sundays each year and only for two hours before and after each game. If the No. 7 line is extended it's possible that there would be less traffic congestion than is caused by games held in the Meadowlands. If Cablevision succeeds in its plan to develop housing at the site the congestion will be even more of a problem every day of the year. But we don't really care about Manhattan and its Yuppie obstructionists. No one in Manhattan appears to care about congestion on the Grand Central Parkway caused by Mets games or the US Open.
The bottom line is this: New York is the greatest city in the world and it is only fitting that it should host the world's greatest sporting event in state-of-the-art facilities that will serve the people of this city for decades to come. It is unthinkable that the glorious dream of hosting the Olympics might be crushed to serve the narrow interests of Madison Square Garden and the vision-less cablevision.
