The big winner in Major League Soccer is its lobbying team.
The league is trying so hard to get a new stadium in Queens, it has paid lobbyists $1.48 million since March to score points with officials in Albany and the city.
The spending spree to help secure government approvals for a planned $300 million, 25,000-seat stadium in Flushing Meadows Park is on pace to rival similar lobbying campaigns for Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and the failed West Side football stadium plan.
MLS honchos say fielding a brand-new franchise on the eastern end of the park is a top priority. They hope to break ground by 2014 and have a team playing there by 2016.
The project has divided the community.
Many soccer-starved immigrants support it, saying they don’t want to travel 30 miles to Harrison, NJ, to watch the MLS’s Red Bulls play. But activists say the park is already too commercialized considering it’s home to Citi Field, the National Tennis Center and potentially a mall which the Mets’ owners want to build.
“It’s a joke that [MLS] is spending money like drunken sailors for a project that has strong community opposition,” said Geoffrey Croft of New York City Park Advocates.
Most of the MLS’s lobbying fees — $920,822 — were dished out to HR&A Associates, a politically connected firm staffed with many ex-city officials.
MLS spokeswoman Risa Heller downplayed HR&A’s contract, saying the firm works mostly as “real-estate advisers” and only “occasionally” as lobbyists.
Although the MLS plan is supported by Mayor Bloomberg, it still needs city and state approval because the project would take up 10 to 13 acres of city parkland that, by state law, must be replaced elsewhere. Complicating the process is that the project footprint includes two worn-out public soccer fields the city is in the process of replacing as part of a $2.8 million project.
City officials declined comment when asked if it is fiscally sound to spend tax dollars on new fields that could be ripped up months later to pave the way for a stadium.
However, MLS president Mark Abbott said the league plans to “invest tens of millions of dollars” in improvements for the park, including replacing both fields and renovating others.
Supporters like Mark Montaya, 34, of Flushing, say the “project isn’t just about bringing pro soccer to Queens, it’s about improving public soccer fields in the heart of a community that loves the soccer.”
The league says it will build the stadium without government subsidies, but sources say MLS is seeking a 35-year, a $1-a-year deal with the city that includes no property taxes or revenue-sharing.
Julie Wood, a Bloomberg spokeswoman, said the mayor supports the project because it “would not only be welcome news for local fans — it would mean thousands of jobs and boost the city’s economy.”