Luxury boxes at the new Yankees and Mets ballparks are such prime real estate that everyone wants a piece of the action, especially Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Details have recently emerged that his administration played hardball to get an exclusive box at the new Yankee stadium, but there are new questions about what the city traded for the same perk at the Mets new home across town.
Recently released internal e-mails between the mayor's aides, city lawyers and Yankee officials show that City Hall gave up 250 additional parking spaces plus the rights and revenue from three billboards near the stadium in exchange for a suite.
The city had publicly downplayed the importance of the Yankee suite for months, but the e-mails obtained and released by State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky show luxury boxes were "a big issue to the Mayor," as one official put it. And the suites were a major sticking point for months in the sometimes contentious negotiations with both teams, the e-mails show.
Brodsky is investigating the city's deals with the Mets and Yankees, which are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies for the new stadiums that are expected to be completed next year.
"The only thing missing from the negotiations was the public interest," Brodsky said. "These boxes are perks that the taxpayer pays for and knows nothing about, and that's wrong."
For paying customers, the Mets suites were priced at $250,000 to $500,000 apiece, and are sold out. Yankees suites cost $600,000 to $850,000 each, and a few of the lowest-price boxes are still available.
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While details are now known about the parking and other compromises the city made as officials angled for its own box at the new Yankee stadium, the agreement with the Mets is murkier.
In response to questions from The Associated Press, the Bloomberg administration and Mets declined to say what the city traded for a box at the new stadium.
"There were discussions about a number of different elements as it related to our partnership, and the suite was just one," said David Newman, a Mets spokesman.
The city's Economic Development Corp. said the box "was one part of a complex negotiation over a wide array of business terms."
The e-mails indicate the Mets resisted the city's request for a luxury box for months during talks in 2006.
"We'll concede if they stop dickering over the luxury suite," city lawyer Joseph Gunn wrote in an e-mail to several administration officials on Jan. 21, 2006. It was not clear what concession he was describing.
A few days later, in an e-mail chain where several officials were expressing their dismay about how the Yankees were balking at their luxury box request, Seth Pinsky, who was then the executive vice president of the city's Economic Development Corp., wrote "we're still arguing over how much" the Mets were going to bend in luxury box negotiations.
Gunn wrote in the same chain that the request for the Yankees box should be handled "in the same manner that the Mets dealt with this."
In April, Pinsky wrote to other mayoral aides that "the deal-in-principle that was outlined was that we wouldn't have a PARTICULAR box, but that we would, on every night, be guaranteed that SOME box would be available for the city's use."
A month later, the issue was apparently still unresolved. An e-mail from an aide to Pinsky referred to "luxury box?" as one of the "major open issues" with both the Mets and Yankees.
It was still described as "open" in a July message from Pinsky to former deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff.
Pinsky reported to Doctoroff that the Mets had agreed to give the city a luxury box to use for free during all regular season games. But for playoff games, all-star games and concerts, the Mets were insisting the city would have to pay for tickets at face value.
"Since this is a big issue to the Mayor, I wanted to confirm that you would be OK with this," Pinsky wrote.
Doctoroff fired back three minutes later:
"We are giving them how much money? For whatever it is, we should get the tickets for free."
Two days later, Pinsky reported to Doctoroff that there was a deal.
"They are putting us on the edge of the infield dirt along the third baseline," he wrote.
