By Lukas Herbert

By now, most Highbridge residents have probably received the latest from the Yankees in their mailboxes: "Building for Our Future and Yours", a slick, full-color mailing intended to make everyone feel great about the new Yankee Stadium project. However, when was the last time an example of responsible development project needed to mail propaganda to every resident in a community? The fact that the Yankees have to do this, is telling - their project is irresponsible and concerned residents called them on it. Now they're playing defense.

If the City were serious about having responsible development, this project would have never gotten as far as it did. The community would have been involved from Day 1. Instead, we were deliberately cut out of the process as back-room arrangements were made for the Yankees by our elected officials as part of a scheme to maximize profits for the team, no mater what the price for the community.

April 5 is the day the City Council decides whether or not to allow this ill-conceived project to go forward - and the future of the Highbridge community hangs in the balance. If approved, the project will change our community forever: we will lose our parks, we will have 4,000 new parking spaces to encourage suburban fans to drive to games and we will have no guarantee of a new, badly-needed Metro-North station at the stadium. We will also have a gigantic, 14-story stadium built directly across the street from a number of historically important apartment buildings, which will undoubtedly destroy the quality of life for the people who live there. Those who live further up the hill can expect massive traffic tie-ups - much more than you are used to now - since stadium traffic will be shifted a few blocks north, right on the doorstep of Highbridge. Despite what the Yankees propaganda literature says, it is a bad deal for Highbridge - and a bad deal for the City, since we are paying a big chunk of the bill. It will be up to the City Council Members to see this and vote their conscience. Is the destruction of our neighborhood worth it?

Lukas Herbert is an urban planner and a member of Community Board 4.