Yankee Stadium Charity Is Called Into Question

In the summer of 2006, when the Yankees broke ground on a gleaming new stadium in the South Bronx, they offered an olive branch to a community furious that more than 25 acres of treasured public parkland had been seized for the project. The Yankees created a charity, called the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund, which it intended to distribute almost $40 million in cash grants and sports equipment, along with 600,000 baseball tickets, to community organizations in the borough over four decades.

Ten years later, however, an examination of the fund’s public financial records and interviews with community members and a former administrator of the fund show that it has operated with…