By Nick Buglione
"We're very hopeful. I am convinced this is going to happen," said Curry, president of Bring Our Jets Home, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the Jets back to the Manhattan side of the Hudson River. "We're a New York team and we don't play in New York anymore."
Yet if New York winds up hosting the 2012 Olympics, and a $1-billion-plus stadium complex is built over the West Side rail yards in Manhattan, as planned, it could become the Jets' new home after their lease with Giants Stadium expires in 2008.
"The original design was put together by NYC2012," New York's Olympic bid group, said Jets President Jay Cross. "But when we got involved, we provided our own design about a year ago."
Although opponents argue that the stadium would bring horrible traffic and higher taxes, the Jets organization and New York elected officials are reportedly keen on the idea.
Yet when Curry and a few fellow fans started Bring Our Jets Home almost four years ago, it didn't look like the Jets would ever be playing in New York again. "We started in 1999, shortly after the 1998 season," said Curry, an East Meadow native who now lives in West Hempstead. "We wanted to advocate to then-owner Leon Hess that he should make a commitment to bring the Jets back to New York and not extend the lease with the Meadowlands."
Owner of the Jets since 1963, the oil tycoon moved the team out of Shea Stadium after the 1983 season, citing issues with the facility. The Jets' stay at Giants Stadium, in East Rutherford, N.J., was supposed to be temporary, until a first-class arena for the team could be built. While the ownership pledged a return to New York by 1989, it never happened.
After Hess's death in 1999, Bring Our Jets Home kicked its campaign into high gear. "Now we wanted to advocate to the prospective bidders to let them know that the fans out there wanted the Jets to come back to New York," Curry said.
For the 500-plus members of the organization, the reasons why the team should move back are simple. "It's a matter of identity," said Curry, a season ticket holder for the past five years. "We're the only sports franchise that plays in a stadium named after another team. Jets fans feel like we're the step-children of New York sports."
Long Island, Queens and Brooklyn are also where the bulk of Jets fans live, he added, noting that the team even practices just west of East Meadow, at Hofstra. For those fans, getting to and from a game can be an all-day affair.
"We're monstrously poorly served at Giants Stadium," Curry said. "We have to cross two bodies of water to get there. When it takes longer to get home from the game than it takes to play the game, you have a problem." In the absence of mass transit, local fans have no choice but to make the drive, which often means getting stuck for hours in traffic on the way home.
Hope for change came in 2000, however, when Robert Wood Johnson IV, of the pharmaceutical company Johnson and Johnson, bought the Jets for $635 million.
"We're ecstatic with Woody Johnson," said Curry, who spoke with Johnson about two months ago. "During his opening press conference, he said he wanted to bring the Jets back to New York. I thanked him for thinking about it, and he said, 'No, Pat, we're not just thinking about it, we're going to make it happen.'"
Though the International Olympic Committee won't choose the host of the 2012 games until 2005, the media has been buzzing over the prospect of an 86,000-seat stadium being built on the West Side if New York, the American Olympic candidate, were selected.
Preliminary figures indicate that the stadium would cost $800 million to build, largely paid for by the National Football League and the New York Jets, since it would become the team's permanent home. State and city money is being sought, though, to pay for the $500-million construction of a retractable roof and a platform over the rail yards between 30th and 34th streets and 11th and 12th avenues.
Critics maintain that a stadium on the West Side would be a traffic nightmare and question whether taxpayer money should be put into the project, given the city's and state's shaky financial status. Area residents have also voiced objections.
Steve Sommers, longtime analyst for the Astoria, Queens-based WFAN radio station, doesn't think the plan is feasible. "I can't see, to be honest with you, anything in terms of a stadium happening on the West Side of Manhattan," he said. "At this point, I don't think a single cent of taxpayers' dollars should go toward having the Olympics here when the city is under such financial burden.
"Probably where the Jets ought to have themselves a stadium is where, for the most part, their fan base is: on [Long Island]."
NYC2012 does have two alternate stadium sites planned in Queens, either of which would be fine, according to Curry. "We would be just as happy with an alternate site in Queens," he said, but "Woody wants his dream in Manhattan. The mayor wants his dream in Manhattan. So we're with them."
Even if New York doesn't host the Olympics, Curry said, Johnson personally assured him that the team would still pursue the construction of the West Side stadium.
"We see this as bringing the Jets home and giving us back an identity and making it much easier for the fan base to see a game, enjoy it and get home at a reasonable hour," he said.
