The people who run Madison Square Garden own the land on which their arena sits. In any discussion about what to do with that land, this fact ought to be the starting point. Alas, today it is otherwise, which helps explain both the contentiousness surrounding the renewal of the Garden’s special permit — and the larger challenges faced by those trying to do business in this city.
By law, any arena that seats more than 2,500 people needs a special permit. The Garden’s original permit expired in January, and the city is now considering its request for a renewal.
Since the Garden has been here for 45 years and the nature of its business — sports and entertainment — hasn’t changed, you might think a permit renewal would be straightforward. Especially in a city that has a stake in showing a competitive business world that our rules are clear, reasonable and fairly applied.
The problem here is that other agendas are at work. Some dream of resurrecting the old Penn Station that was torn down, so they want the Garden to move. The legal problem these critics have is that they don’t own the land, and anyway there’s no place for the Garden to go (much less any real chance for the Penn Station they dream of to be built).
Though the city concedes that “virtually all special permits” are now given with no time limit, the Garden’s foes are asking for this one to be limited to 10 years. In short, they want a permit which gives them time to oust the Garden from its own land.
We find it extraordinary that New York would entertain sending that signal to a private enterprise that employs thousands of workers, that is a cultural as well as a business icon, that pays millions in taxes, that brings millions of people to the city every year — and that has just invested $1 billion of its own money to overhaul the place.
Sure, we’d like to see a better Penn Station. But it’s not the Garden’s fault that the city and state have failed so spectacularly to move that ball.
Ditto for complaints about the Garden’s tax breaks. True, the arena enjoys a property-tax break that was part of its deal back in the 1980s. But the Garden’s breaks are relatively modest compared with the breaks and subsidies enjoyed by, say, the Barclays Center, Yankee Stadium or Citi Field.
If the city can come up with a viable plan for Penn Station it can fund and build, and if the state proposes to strip all sports and entertainment venues of their breaks and subsidies in favor of a cleaner, flatter tax code for all, we’ll be first to bang the drums in support.
In the meantime, a New York claiming to be “open for business” ought to be doing all it can to discourage those who would transform a zoning-permit renewal for a private-property owner into a highly politicized field of dreams.