Mayor Bloomberg answered a question about bidding for the conventions during Q&A with reporters on May 22, 2006.  He was accompanied by Senator Schumer, Borough President Markowitz and Fairway President Glickberg at the dedication ceremony for New Market on Brooklyn Waterfront, located at 480-500 Van Brunt Street at Reed Street in Brooklyn.

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE CITY OF NEW YORK

 

REPORTER: Mayor, do we have any shot at getting the next Republican Convention in ’08?

MAYOR: I think we’re going to apply for it the same way we did four years ago to both conventions.  Typically conventions do not go to the same city two years in a row, but we’re not a city of quitters.  We’re going to try.  I was disappointed we didn’t get both of the conventions the last time.  It turns out this time that both parties have set the dates of their conventions so close together that you could not stage both of them.  There’s only three or four days between them and it takes them months to take something like the Garden and set it up to get ready.  But we have submitted the bid to one of the parties.  It was due I think on Friday and the next one’s due I think it’s this week, and we will submit a bid to them.

This is about economic development and has nothing to do with politics.  The city is the host of many, many events.  We would like to be the host for more.  We lost a phenomenal opportunity which will hurt this city for decades to not have a facility where we could host the very big events.  But we’ll go after the medium-size ones like conventions.  And we’ll do everything we can to, when the Site Selection Committees for both parties come here, to show them how New York conducts itself and puts something on the- let something on the calendar go forward.  I think the Republican Convention was a great economic boon to this city and we handled ourselves as well as any city has ever handled a big event with protests.  If you remember we had hundreds of thousands of people walking right by the Garden.  We didn’t put barbed wire about our place.  We had very few people who came out to try to disrupt the goings-on and they were dealt with I think in the context of a large number of people, they were dealt with as good as our well-trained phenomenal police force could possibly have done.  I was very proud of the way they acted.  And we would have loved to have both conventions.  Unfortunately we couldn’t stage both of them.  But if people want to come to this city, our city is open. Sir?

REPORTER: (?)

SCHUMER: Can I say just one thing about that?

MAYOR: Sure.

SCHUMER: We’re going to work hard, the New York Democratic Delegation.  We’ve already talked about it, to bring the Democratic Convention here to New York and show a great convention to the city of New York.  And maybe if Marty’s here we can have some of the event in Brooklyn.  Right?

MARKOWITZ: No, the convention should be at the new arena.

SCHUMER: Oh okay. If it will be ready in time.

MAYOR: Unfortunately the new arena will not be ready in time. We’ve looked into that, exactly right. I’ve certainly looking for alternative venues.