A panoramic view of Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees Chicago Cubs baseball game on Saturday, April 4, 2009 in Bronx, N.Y. By Thad Allender, USA TODAY

Baseball's new palaces: Yankee Stadium and Mets' Citi Field
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The new Yankee Stadium, built next door to the 1923 model, has general seats that range from $12 to $365. The stadium is 63% bigger than the old one.
perspectiveAerials for USA TODAY
The new Yankee Stadium, built next door to the 1923 model, has general seats that range from $12 to $365. The stadium is 63% bigger than the old one.
NEW YORK — Seventeen years after the opening of Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards triggered the era of throwback baseball stadiums, the next generation arrives here this weekend.

The new Yankee Stadium and the Mets' Citi Field, costing a combined $2.3 billion, open the gates for exhibition games Friday and Saturday, ushering a new level of luxury to the nation's pastime.

Construction costs were assumed by the two teams, but the projects — discussed for a decade and officially unveiled in mid-2005 — were aided by several hundred million dollars in public financing, tax breaks and infrastructure improvements. That made the deals controversial in a city struggling to fund schools and mass transit amid the recession.

This type of stadium-opening doubleheader isn't unique in the recent sports building boom. In Pittsburgh, the Pirates' PNC Park and the NFL Steelers' Heinz Field opened in 2001 with a more modest $543 million total price tag.

The new Yankee Stadium, at $1.5 billion the most expensive sports venue built in the USA, replaces the team's historic 1923 stadium with everything fans love and hate about baseball's pinstriped royalty.

In an age in which small, intimate ballparks have been the trend, the 52,000-seat stadium is a testament to grandeur. From the exterior modeled after the original stadium to its 1,400 video monitors to the $2,625-per-game premium seats in the first couple of rows, it makes a statement that owner George Steinbrenner echoes in his every move: This is New York, this is the Yankees, this must be the best.

"It's always George's philosophy: This is the Yankees, everything has to be done first-rate," Yankees President Randy Levine says. "We wanted … to create a stadium that, when you go in, there's a 'wow' factor."

That's registering even with veteran players, who toured the site before spring training.

"It's a lot better than I think anyone even expected," says Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, who with his teammates moved into the stadium Thursday.

Across town in Flushing, 42,000-seat Citi Field, built in a Shea Stadium parking lot at slightly more than half the cost of its Bronx counterpart, provides the latest incarnation of traditional parks. It offers nods to the old Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants while including amenities such as high-definition scoreboards and a restaurant with a view of the field.

In contrast to the Yankees' approach, the Wilpon family, owners of the Mets, made a conscious effort to build a ballpark, not a stadium.

"I like the intimacy," says Jeff Wilpon, Mets chief operating officer, who walked through the park during a college game that served as a dry run Sunday. "Usually, (you see) people looking up in awe. I saw a lot of people looking down … into details of what was there."

Among those details is the entrance: a rotunda architecturally inspired by the beloved entry to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and honoring Jackie Robinson, the Dodgers icon who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. Throughout, Citi Field has a distinctly New York flavor, from concessions by popular city restaurants such as Cascarino's Pizza to steel trusses symbolic of the bridges that link the boroughs.

The debate over financing

The controversy over the public contributions to the facilities built slowly, bursting into the headlines during contentious hearings this year after both clubs sought additional financing. The Yankees have received a total of $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds and $136 million in taxable bonds; the Mets got $697 million in tax-free bonds.

"We've used tax-exempt financing, but we're paying for each and every cent of this stadium," Levine says. "It's important to note the city owns this stadium. We have a long-term lease. We basically got a low borrowing rate; that was the advantage of going this route."

Wilpon notes the teams also are assuming the risk of the projects and that the Mets simply exercised a request for a 10% "completion" bond ($82.2 million) as spelled out in the original agreement with the city and its Industrial Development Agency.

The city's Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded agency that provides non-partisan information about financial issues, estimated the Yankees deal will cost the city $362 million, the Mets' agreement $138 million. Savings to the teams: $787 million over 40 years for the Yankees, $513 million for the Mets.

Other estimates vary, as figures in the complex deals are interpreted differently.

New York State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, D-Westchester, the most vocal critic of the deals, says the taxpayers' tab for Yankee Stadium eventually will total $4 billion. (He includes potential property tax revenue over 40 years given up in the deal, although stadium advocates argue the teams weren't paying property tax at their old stadiums.)

"I don't know what you think about bank bailouts, but the public is spending $4 billion to build Yankee Stadium, at a time we can't fund the (subway system) and schools," he says, adding the deals are a misuse of a financing tool called PILOTS (payment in lieu of taxes).

"It's like you built a new house, and the local town tax collector came in and said, 'You owe $10,000 a year in property taxes,' and you say, 'I'll pay you but only on the condition you send it to my bank to cover my mortgage.' That's happened," he says.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city officials say the costs are reasonable when compared with the millions of dollars in economic activity and other community benefits the facilities will generate. The state also has contributed to infrastructure investments such as the new parking garage at Yankee Stadium.

Neil deMause, co-author of Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit, estimates the total cost of Yankee Stadium at more than $2 billion counting the price of land, garages, demolition of the old stadium and parks to replace those given up for the new site. He estimates the total public costs for both ballparks at $1.8 billion.

"It's not about the financing. … If the city were just selling bonds for the team and then getting paid back, that would be fine," says deMause, who runs the stadium news website fieldofschemes.com. "The problem is they're selling tax-exempt bonds. … That money is effectively fronted by taxpayers."

With Yankee Stadium, he adds, the overall cost is so huge that it represents the largest private contribution to a stadium in U.S. history and the largest public contribution.

Both teams can also count on savings from a reduced payment into Major League Baseball's revenue-sharing plan. MLB allows clubs to deduct stadium costs such as bond payments from their revenue figures used to calculate the contribution.

Ticket prices draw fire

The ticket pricing structure for the stadiums also is generating controversy, as many fans think they're being priced out of seeing games. Yankees tickets will range from $5 for obstructed-view bleacher seats to $2,625; the Mets' prices will be from $11 to $695 (for opening day and the Yankees series).

"There's been more outrage since people have seen the ticket prices," deMause says. "People are saying, 'Wait a minute, we're having to pay for some of this and we're going to have to pay $200 a ticket or sit behind a foul pole?' "

The affordable seats in good locations are going fast, he adds.

Says Brodsky, "You have a stadium paid for by taxpayers that taxpayers can't afford to get into."

It's a common complaint with new stadiums and underscores a basic tenet of sports pricing: Teams charge what they think the public will pay. Team Marketing Report, which conducts an annual survey of ticket prices in baseball, listed the Yankees' average price at an MLB-high $72.97, a 76.3% increase from last year. Yankees general partner Hal Steinbrenner acknowledges "small amounts" of the team's tickets might be overpriced.

Yankees chief operating officer Lonn Trost says 80% of the non-premium seats are $100 or less. The expensive seats close to home plate and the dugouts are basically subsidizing the rest of the park, he says. The Mets say 50% of their seats are priced at less than $50.

Both clubs acknowledge the economy has hurt sales of premium seats but decline to reveal how many remain unsold.

"Of course, it's a little bit below," Wilpon says of the Mets' sales, although the team has sold all 49 of its full-season suites costing between $250,000 and $500,000. "We thought we'd be sold out going into the season."

The Yankees say they've sold all 52 of their full-season suites (costing between $600,000 and $850,000), but they took out a full-page ad in The New York Times last month for their premium seats.

"The question is: Did they build a stadium for 2008 in 2009?" deMause says. "Especially with the Yankee (stadium); it's so geared to the high-end customer."

If the team doesn't sell the top-priced tickets, it could face embarrassing TV shots of empty seats in lower sections, he adds.

The Mets have sidestepped most of the financing controversy, but the club and Citigroup have been in the line of fire over the troubled financial company's 20-year, $400 million deal for the park's naming rights.

Dave Howard, Mets executive vice president for business operations, says the 2006 agreement should help drive business to Citigroup.

A package deal

This weekend's ballgames culminate years-long efforts by both teams to secure facilities with the revenue streams that ballparks such as Camden Yards introduced beginning in the early 1990s.

The Yankees' buzz started as far back as 1984, just eight years after the team moved into a renovated Yankee Stadium, when New Jersey officials made overtures to the club about moving to the Meadowlands complex across the Hudson River.

While the Yankees' complaints about their old stadium centered on a lack of parking and the condition of the surrounding neighborhood, the Mets were playing in a park that had opened as a combined baseball-football facility in 1964, without the revenue streams such as plush luxury suites that the new parks feature.

Days before leaving office in 2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced deals with both clubs for separate $800 million, retractable-roof stadiums to be built adjacent to their current parks. The city and teams would split construction costs. But incoming Mayor Bloomberg, citing budget problems, quickly put the projects on hold.

The $1.5 billion price tag (including financing) for Yankee Stadium tops London's new Wembley Stadium, which opened in 2007 and cost about $1.18 billion by current exchange rates. The new Dallas Cowboys stadium, which opens this year in Arlington, Texas, and London's stadium for the 2012 Olympics are likely to cost more than $1 billion.

Shea Stadium was demolished to make room for parking near Citi Field. Old Yankee Stadium, owned by the city, will be torn down over the next year or so.

The controversies and finances might be nudged aside by baseball statistics, at least temporarily, when the parks hold regular-season home openers in mid-April.

Both teams missed the playoffs last year. By October, the success of the investments might be judged on whether the teams can return to championship form. In New York, winning answers a lot of questions.

Contributing: Steve DiMeglio and Seth Livingstone in Tampa; the Associated Press

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