The Giants and the Jets signed an agreement on Thursday to jointly build a stadium complex in New Jersey's Meadowlands, ending the Jets' long and tangled attempt to cross the Hudson River, first to a stadium on Manhattan's West Side, then to a park in Queens.
In signing the agreement to share the estimated US$800 million cost of construction, the two teams became equal partners in the stadium complex, the first time that such a two-team deal has been reached in the history of the NFL.
For almost two decades, the Jets have been tenants in Giants Stadium, a situation that they found humiliating and which prompted them to hunt for a new location they could call their own. They famously enlisted the support of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in a bruising political battle to build the world's most expensive stadium, on a platform over railroad tracks on the West Side, but it ended in failure. A second attempt to move to New York, this time to Queens, was in its early stage.
Much to the relief of the Jets, the new stadium in New Jersey would no longer bear the name of the Meadowlands' first tenant, the Giants. The naming rights will be sold to the highest bidder, with the teams sharing the revenue and using the latest in electronic and video technology to transform the stadium into their own branded site on game days.
The agreement ended weeks of posturing and speculation that the Giants would block a partnership, or the Jets would abandon the Meadowlands complex after 21 years and return to Queens.
The owner of the Jets, Woody Johnson, said Thursday that he would move the team's headquarters and training facilities to New Jersey from Hempstead, on Long Island, and play in the Meadowlands in perpetuity.
The owners of the Giants, in turn, agreed to move their offices and practice field away from the stadium to a 20-acre parcel behind the nearby racetrack, to satisfy the Jets' insistence that the new stadium be "team-neutral."
At a news conference at Giants Stadium with the owners of both teams on Thursday, Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey of New Jersey, who was directly involved in the negotiations, sat down at a table and with a flourish added his signature to an agreement making the Jets full and equal partners with the Giants in a deal to build the new stadium.
"The deal is now sealed," he said. He called it historic.
Codey said the deal would make New Jersey residents proud and generate tax revenue and jobs. But it will also require the state to provide 20 acres of land for the Jets training center and 20 acres for the Giants, aside from the 75 acres on which the stadium complex will be built.
The team owners, however, have yet to settle some of the most thorny issues, including the size and shape of the stadium. In the coming months, they plan to form a design team and develop a master plan for the project. In a crucial element of the partnership, the teams have agreed to send any issues on which they cannot agree to an arbitrator, most likely Paul Tagliabue, commissioner of the NFL.
Carl J. Goldberg, chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, said the stadium complex would be integrated into Xanadu, the US$2 billion shopping and entertainment center that will share the 750-acre property.
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