New York City issued a bunch of bonds to build parking garages around Yankee Stadium. Seems that way fewer people are parking in them than expected, however, the garages have lost money both last year and this year and now it looks like the garage operator is going to default on rent payments to the city and bondholders are going to get stiffed as a result.
One way to look at this is to say that you’re pretty much a moron if you’re buying bonds backed by parking garage receipts at a facility with ample, cheap and convenient mass transit next door.
Another way to look at it is that this is just another example of public money being wasted on ballpark and ballpark-related projects. Because — as Neil deMause notes at the great Field of Schemes blog — even if it’s the bondholders and not the city who are left holding the bag here, the city issued bonds that are likely to end up in default, and that will make it harder and more expensive for the city to issue bonds for other projects in the future.
