Yankee Stadium parking owner would get $200M under bailout

The financially-imperiled Yankee Stadium garage company may receive a new taxpayer subsidy of over $200 million if a financial bailout plan designed during the Bloomberg administration is approved.

Major League Soccer announced in May it would form the league’s 20th team in the city, to be jointly owned by Manchester City owner Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan and the New York Yankees. The partners have put forward a proposal to pay about $25 million for one of The Garages On West 153rd Street owned by nonprofit Bronx Parking Development Company, which operates the stadium’s garage system.

But the bailout plan – which was approved on Dec. 18 by Bronx Parking’s board of directors and the holders of its debt – stipulates that the nonprofit will operate rent-free until 2056 on more than 20 acres of city-owned land where its other stadium garages are located, according to the New York Daily News.

Bronx Parking was meant to pay an annual rent of $3.2 million under a 2007 agreement in which it received $237 million in tax-exempt bonds to build the garages. But the company has been struggling to make an income from the garages, and currently owes the city more than $50 million in back rent, taxes and interest, according to the newspaper.

Under the terms of the bailout, the city will lose out on rent of about $150 million, and also forgo the $50 million currently owed, according to the Daily News.

“There is no final restructuring agreement at this point,” Benjamin Branham, a spokesperson for the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said in a statement last week to the newspaper. [NYDN] – Hiten Samtani