Soccer club New York City F.C. is mulling a move to Columbia University’s Baker Athletics Complex in Northern Manhattan.
N.Y.C.F.C., owned by United Arab Emirates royalty and the Yankees, is currently playing its first season at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, according to the New York Times. Over the past years, the club has utilized multiple locations around the city, including a park in Queens, a factory site in the Bronx and a pier in the Hudson River.
The proposal includes a new stadium that would also be used by Columbia’s football team, the newspaper reported. That would mean that the existing 17,000-seat Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium would be demolished and replaced with a new 25,000-seat one. Building a new stadium could be as much as $400 million, the newspaper reported.
“New York City F.C. is looking at sites all over New York City,” Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for the team, told the newspaper. “We are working with the de Blasio administration to find a world-class site for a soccer-specific stadium.” [NYT] — Claire Moses