By Herb Jackson, The Record, Hackensack, N.J. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 7--The chairman of the agency that runs the Meadowlands Sports Complex is lobbying state legislators to reject acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco's plans for the site -- and will likely be replaced because of it.
'The proposal for office buildings, large shopping center, theme park, and structured parking will not fit on the complex,' Raymond Bateman, chairman of the Sports and Exposition Authority, wrote in a letter mailed this week to all 80 members of the state Assembly.
'On 18 football Sundays and on other major event days, we would have the worst kind of gridlock chaos,' he wrote, referring to Giants and Jets home games. He said the proposal endorsed by DiFrancesco 'is not a well-thought-out business plan, and it is even worse as public policy.'
Asking that their names not be used, two administration sources said Bateman will likely be replaced as chairman, although he would remain as a commissioner of the agency because his appointment runs through 2005.
The sources said Bateman had previously offered to resign over the disagreements about the Meadowlands' future, but DiFrancesco turned him down, hoping Bateman would come to support his plan.
'Now that this letter's gone out,' one source said, 'it's likely you would see some changes in the sports authority in the near future.'
The likely changes may not stop with Bateman. Another official said the administration was also considering whether to replace authority President James DiEleuterio because of what is perceived to be a lack of confidence in Trenton in the authority's leadership.
Bateman, interviewed by telephone from Maine, where he is vacationing, said he is not concerned.
'It's up to the governor,' he said. 'If he wants to put somebody else in, that's fine by me. I'll still be a member of the sports authority. I'm more concerned, frankly, with the future of the Sports and Exposition Authority than I am with my own job.'
A sports authority source said Bateman could be replaced as chairman by M. Joseph Montuoro, a longtime friend of DiFrancesco's. One possible replacement for DiEleuterio, whose $197,797 salary is one of the highest in state government, is Jeffrey Michaels, chief of staff to DiFrancesco.
DiFrancesco spokesman Tom Wilson denied that Michaels was bucking for the job.
DiFrancesco, who is also state Senate president, won Senate approval last week for a plan that would provide a financing framework for a new arena in Newark for professional basketball's Nets and hockey's Devils. The teams now play at the 20-year-old Continental Arena in East Rutherford, but have threatened to leave the state unless they get a more modern venue.
Under the administration's plan, which is before the Assembly, the Newark arena would be finished by the fall of 2004 and Continental Arena would be torn down. The arena is seen as part of a continuing effort to revitalize Newark, the state's largest city, which has benefited from the recent openings of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and a minor league baseball park.
Plans for what would happen in the Meadowlands after the arena shuts down are far from complete, but proposals call for developing a combination of sports, shopping, and entertainment attractions that would make it a regional tourist destination, with interactive entertainment and possibly a new football stadium and auto racing track around the Meadowlands Racetrack.
Supporters of the plan say the sports authority has become reliant on state subsidies to operate and the new attractions would increase tax revenues.
Bateman, a former state Senate president and gubernatorial candidate who was named authority chairman in July 1996 by then-Gov. Christie Whitman, slammed the proposal in his letter to Assembly members.
He pointed out that the sports authority has been studying better uses of its site at least since 1994, and the administration's plan 'simply rehashes some of their concepts without recognizing why some were rejected as impractical.'
The administration's call to realign Route 120 through the Meadowlands, for example, was rejected in 1994 by area mayors and the Giants football management, Bateman said. The $200 million price tag and 10-year time frame 'makes this part of the proposal quite suspect,' he said, adding that extending rail lines to the Meadowlands to alleviate traffic and parking problems 'would be impossible to accomplish until long after the planned closure of Continental Arena.'
Bateman said expanding the Meadowlands tract to include surrounding property was an option, but that could require expensive environmental cleanups. He concluded his letter by reminding lawmakers that the sports complex was 'recognized around the country and around the world as New Jersey's crown jewel. I ask you not to let it become just another shopping center-office park.'
Wilson said he had not seen the letter, but Bateman was entitled to his opinion. He went on to say, however, that Bateman might not want to remain as head of the sports authority if he disagreed so strongly with the administration.
'If the chairman simply doesn't agree with the direction the governor wants to take the sports authority and isn't going to support our effort to revitalize the region and create this world-class attraction, obviously he should do what he thinks is appropriate,' Wilson said. 'Ray Bateman is a stalwart in state politics. I would not think he would want to be part of something he did not feel 100 percent committed to.'
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