“One of the most common comments we get when we talk to people about it is: who would be against this?” said Costello, an insurance company safety consultant and a Yankees fan despite his family’s roots in Brooklyn.
But the city is not seriously considering the proposal, which would involve restoring the Yankee Stadium name and two carved eagle medallions to the gate, to make it look as it did in 1928, and building a new side wall.
We have a commitment to the community to deliver a new park by the fall of 2011,” said Liam Kavanagh, the first deputy commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation. “Removing the larger structure of the stadium while preserving the gate would be costly and time consuming.”The city is still saying the cost of the project would be $10 million, even though the Gate 2 people insist it will only cost $1 million. It's really a shame that we're going to completely lose such an important part of American History.
Andrew Brent, deputy press secretary to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, was even blunter.
“There are no plans to preserve Gate 2,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “Because it’s not structurally independent, it would need to be severed, shored up and fully reconstructed” at a cost of $10 million.
John Trush, a member of the Save the Yankee Gate 2 committed, who is a engineer and former hot dog vendor at the Stadium, explained it this way. “There’s no Ebbets Field, no Penn Station,” said Trush. “We take down stuff all the time.” America definitely has a way of knocking down its history and building something crappy over it.
It looks like the only thing that can save this project is one or a group of generous millionaires. Trush had this suggestion to a certain Yankees shortstop:
“Look,” he said, “it’s Gate 2. Jeter’s No. 2. He’s got the Turn 2 Foundation. He can buy the gate! Call it Turn 2 Gate.”
