Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg committed last night to help the Mets build a stadium that could be converted into the centerpiece for the 2012 Olympics in an 11th-hour deal to salvage the city's bid for the Games.
After state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver rejected plans for a stadium on Manhattan's West Side last week, the city and the Mets opened talks about a new stadium in the Willets Point section of Queens near Shea.
The Mets' new stadium would be converted to Olympic use - if New York is chosen as host of the Olympics.
The Mets would pay the cost of the stadium, which would open in 2009 and be built adjacent to the existing Shea Stadium in Queens. It would be converted for use for the Olympics if the city is chosen as the host for the Games.
The city and state would contribute $180 million for improvements to the infrastructure around the stadium and would pay an additional $100 million to convert the stadium to Olympic use.
The Mets' principal owner, Fred Wilpon, said he would not know the cost of the stadium until a design was selected, but he estimated that it would be $600 million.
Mr. Wilpon has previously prepared plans for a stadium that would be modeled after Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, but few details were given about this new plan. Mr. Bloomberg said the stadium would have a capacity of about 45,000, which would temporarily be expanded to 80,000 for the Olympics.
The deal was put together in 72 hours after long-held plans to construct an Olympic stadium on the West Side of Manhattan were killed last week.
The new plan seems free of the political problems that were fatal to the West Side plan and will enable the organizing committee, NYC2012, to meet today's deadline to respond to a report by the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission in which New York's lack of a stadium was specifically noted as a concern.
Mr. Bloomberg had long talked down the idea of putting the Olympic stadium in Queens, saying it lacked the glamour of Manhattan, where the city skyline would add drama to the Games. "This was not our first choice," Mr. Bloomberg said last night at a news conference at City Hall. "But when you don't get your first choice, you find what you do have and fight harder to win with that one."
The host city for the 2012 Games will be chosen in a little more than three weeks, on July 6, when the I.O.C. meets in Singapore to select the winner among the five finalists - New York, Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow.
The I.O.C. gave NYC2012 permission to alter its bid last week after the proposal to finance the West Side stadium plan was derailed when state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and state Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno refused to approve it. The planned $2.2 billion stadium project, for which the Jets were to pay $1.6 billion, would have required a $600 million public subsidy, half of which was to come from the state.
Mr. Bloomberg said the new stadium proposal would have to go through the normal budget process, including approval by the City Council and the state, not to mention reaction from the surrounding community.
Mr. Bloomberg, however, said Mr. Silver and Mr. Bruno had already endorsed the new plan, which changes the focus of the Olympic bid from Manhattan to Queens. Not only would the Olympic stadium move there, but Mr. Bloomberg said the main press center and the International Broadcast Center would also be located in Willets Point, adjacent to the new stadium and part of a redevelopment of that area, now filled with junkyards and auto shops.
"I'm glad that the mayor could put together an alternative so fast and that we will be competitive for the 2012 Olympics," Mr. Silver said in an interview last night.
Mr. Silver said that he and Mr. Bruno would join Gov. George E. Pataki in giving Mr. Bloomberg a signed letter committing to the deal, which the mayor could give to the I.O.C. Mr. Silver said that the state's contribution to the plan, $75 million, would not need to go before the Public Authorities Control Board, the board that Mr. Silver used to thwart the West Side stadium.
Also excited about Sunday's development was the United States Olympic Committee, which had initially warned against any impulse to pull out of the bid altogether. Doing so would have damaged hopes for any American city to win a Games in the coming years.
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