by DAVE MARTINEZ

Despite losing up to 40% of the proposed redevelopment area in their original Elmont bid, the New York Cosmos have a renewed optimism over the prospect of their stadium deal.

“We’ve gotten confirmation from ESD that the RFP is still viable, so we take that as a first step as a good thing,” team COO Erik Stover said Tuesday afternoon. “For us, we believe our vision is still completely viable on site B.”

As reported Monday afternoon, the Empire State Development Corp. reached out to bidders about a major change of plans in their now three-year-old RFP for the redevelopment of land in Elmont. The plan, which originally included a swath of land next to Belmont Raceway [Parcel A], now gave jurisdiction of said property to the New York Racing Association. That leaves the Cosmos to work with Parcel B — the larger, southern most property on Hempstead Turnpike, and the footprint area for their proposed stadium.

Parcel A would have included the “restaurant row” aspect of their initial bid. The plan now is for the Cosmos to squeeze all aspects of their original bid onto Parcel B, while keeping their original stadium design in tact.

“We are in the process of analyzing the questions ESD has sent us and our first response is that we believe we can put everything we envisioned on both sites into one site,” Stover said. “Maybe there is a little compromise here or there, but we believe strongly that we can deliver everything we originally promised to Nassau County and New York State.

“We think we can use the mixed use part of it by expanding it on site b without impacting the stadium.”

One part of the original plan that remains a question mark is the land bridge. The proposed structure would create a direct link over Hempstead Turnpike between the Raceway property and the adjacent stadium.

Stover labels it an “integral” part of the overall scope for the project, but with the New York State’s plans for Parcel A unknown, that plan remains up in the air. “We are hopeful [Parcel A] is complimentary to what we are doing and tie the two sites together, so that bridge will be important,” Stover said.

Another area that could change is the proposed hotel, which could make way for their original restaurant row design.

While encouraged by recent developments, Stover isn’t ready to put all his eggs in the Elmont basket just yet. The club has continuously said they are looking at several other sites as a backup to their Elmont proposal. Those sites will still be analyzed as this new phase of the RFP process unfolds.

“You have to because we haven’t gotten anywhere yet,” Stover admits. “We have a very short window to reaffirm our interest to the state so we have to focus on that through the holidays and hopefully get an answer but we haven’t thrown out any of our other options yet. If we have to continue looking at them, we will.”