NYCFC’s New Stadium and Journey
Ever since the inaugural season of NYCFC, the team has been calling Yankee Stadium in The Bronx as its home. While it was supposed to be a temporary home for a couple of seasons, it was not adequate to be its long time home. One of the issues surrounding Yankee Stadium is that it cannot host any CONCACAF Champions League games in the first couple of rounds because it doesn’t have a pitch warmer under the playing surface. The other issue was scheduling. Since NYCFC was the secondary or tertiary tenant, it had to follow when the New York Yankees were not playing in The Bronx, the secondary was usually Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, and tertiary was Saint John’s University’s Belson Stadium.
When a club is founded the MLS usually asks for a five year plan in which a stadium plan has to be in it. This is why the Sacramento Republic’s bid to join the MLS failed as there was no plan to make the stadium bigger or to propose a brand new stadium. In 2012, when NYCFC was founded, there was a proposal made by the team to have a stadium in Manhattan. This plan was to be in Pier 40 which lies near the neighborhood of Greenwich Village. Ultimately that plan was voted down by a state statute and the Hudson River Park Trust. Due to that decision, NYCFC started playing in the home stadium of one of its owners, the Yankees.
Over the years, the club has been trying to get the necessary permits so that they can build a stadium of its own. Up until November of 2022, the club hadn’t had the necessary permits or a location to build its own stadium. Some of the ideas to where to have the 25,000 seater stadium aside from Pier 40, were Baker Field (where Columbia University has its football/soccer stadium), Belmont Park (where the New York Islanders and where the Belmont Stakes are) in Long Island, another stadium near Yankee Stadium, and also in Hudson Yards (Manhattan) and finally in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
Out of all these possibilities, the club and New York City finally came into an agreement to where to have the new stadium. The winning bid was to the Mets chagrin, the one in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. In this manner there would be an expansion to the hub of professional sports in the area since the US Open (Tennis) has a complex within walking distance from Citi Field and also to the newly proposed soccer stadium. The Mets were not that pleased since it’ll lose parking spots to the unnamed stadium. In this deal, the club will foot the bill to build only the stadium. The city would then build a housing complex nearby to meet demand for affordable housing in the City.
I have a mixed opinion on this particular matter. On the positive side, it is more of the thinking that finally this has been resolved as it has been a decade since the announcement of a new team to the area. One of the many problems of this idea are in part what the Mets said in the New York Times piece. The other is that there is an another new stadium in Queens, in the Jamaica neighborhood where both Queensboro FC and York University were building one.