NET LOSS.(The Talk of the Town)(New York, New York)

First things first: the proposed site of the new Brooklyn Nets arena is not, as some have suggested, the same as the one selected almost fifty years ago by the reviled Walter O'Malley, to keep the Dodgers around. That site, which was to have been occupied by a geodesic dome designed by the Princeton student Billy Kleinsasser (the old model sat for years in his parents' basement, in Tennessee), is across the street from where the new Nets owner, Bruce Ratner, wants to move his new team. It is now home to Atlantic Terminal, a high-rise work-in-progress that is also being developed by Bruce Ratner.

New York is a big town, with a lot of teams, and we don't have to look nearly so far back in time--or to such nostalgic standbys as the Brooklyn Dodgers--to come up with noteworthy stadium and arena unveilings for comparison. Remember Fred Wilpon, the Mets owner, posing for photographers in 1998 with his Ebbets Field-inspired mockup? At half a billion dollars (retractable roof included), that was a bargain compared with the latest estimates (just last month) for a Yankees home in Macombs Dam Park, in the Bronx: eight hundred million, with about half to come from the public coffers, and half from Mr. Steinbrenner. The West Side Jets stadium dream is more ambitious still, with a price tag above one and a half billion, all told. (To judge from the architects' renderings that have appeared in the papers, this development would have the bonus effect of doubling the number of trees in Hell's Kitchen. Apparently, football fans would also be arriving at the games by sailboat instead of by car.)

In the past few years, the Islanders, too, have announced plans for a new Coliseum, and the Knicks and the Rangers have continued agitating for a new Garden. Extending the search a half-dozen miles west of the Hudson, we can include the Devils (and the Nets, pre-Ratner), who have designed at least two new prospective homes--one above the ferry terminal in Hoboken and one, more recently, in ...