Lying game starts at NYSCC.

The city has slammed the group that filed a lawsuit to stop the development of the West Side of Manhattan as "lying monopolists," calling the suit "ill-disguised and frivolous."

"Now not only are these lying monopolists trying to derail the New York Sports and Convention Center, but they won't stop until they have stopped the entire development of the Far West Side, an area encompassing dozens of underutilized city blocks, which will create over 200,000 jobs and generate billions in new revenues for the City and State," said City Hall spokeswoman, Jennifer Falk.

"This lawsuit is another ill-disguised and frivolous attempt by Cablevision to rehash their earlier baseless allegations, when they asked the courts last fall to prevent the City Planning Commission from conducting a public hearing regarding the proposed rezoning of the Hudson Yards area. That first attempt was soundly rejected by the court."

The Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association and several local residents and business owners, including Madison Square Garden, filed the lawsuit December 22 in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, against the New York City Planning Commission, New York Department of City Planning, the City of New York and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

The petitioners assert that the approval of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and the associated rezoning in late November for the West Side Stadium project was approved via a fatally flawed environmental review process. According to the suit, the MTA and City violated the requirements of State and City law by failing to provide full, fair, and honest public disclosure of the project's potential significant adverse environmental impacts and the mitigation measures proposed to address them.

"Government decision-makers cannot make rational decisions about one of the largest and costliest projects in City history when the information on which they are relying is inaccurate, misleading and unreliable," said petitioners' attorney, Randy Mastro, partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.

"This intentional manipulation of traffic data undermines the entire environmental review process here. Our clients believe this headlong rush needs to be slowed so we can once and for all determine just exactly what environmental hazards the people of New York will be forced to overcome with the building of this project."

Before getting a chance to even review the court papers, the NYC Law Department vowed to launch a strong legal defense.

In a statement, Susan Kath, chief of the city's Environmental Law Division, said, "We are confident that the environmental review in this ease was de tailed and comprehensive."

But according to a statement issued by the petitioners: "The unreliable data, which asserted that 70% of all persons attending events at the proposed stadium will travel to and from the stadium by mass transit, was generated by two telephone surveys of Jets season ticket holders. One used what the Jets admitted were "push questions", which were calculated to skew the answers in favor of more mass transit and less automobile usage. The other was found "unreliable" by the City's consultants. This "data" was the foundation upon which virtually all of the most important environmental findings were based in the FEIS."

"Based on data compiled between 1987 and 2004, we knew and argued that the traffic data used in the FEIS did not represent reality," said Michael Gerrard, partner at Arnold & Porter LLP and attorney for Madison Square Garden. "Now we know that the agencies' and the Jets' 70% transit-usage assumptions are based on two entirely invalid surveys. The FEIS is incomplete and severely lacking in the information necessary for the public to make any informed judgment on the environmental impact of the West Side project."

According to the suit, the approval of the FEIS violates basic tenets of State and City environmental law mandating full, fair and honest public disclosure of a project's potential significant environmental impacts. The suit seeks to ensure that State and City requirements for full disclosure about environmental impacts are met prior to proceeding with the proposed multibillion-dollar development plan.

Petitioners' attorney Antonia Bryson added, "We intend to force the City to fully reveal the true impact of this West Side project and to finally come into compliance with the environmental requirements. If this project moves forward, it will have severe negative environmental impacts on New Yorkers for generations to come."

But those in the construction industry, who have long supported the entire development, including the Jets' Sports and Convention Center, say no amount of grandstanding at the last minute will halt the city's plan for the West Side of Manhattan.

"The lawsuit is superfluous and just another example of obstructionism," said Lou Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association. "If the plan calls for building only a specific amount of parking spaces, how are they going to get there but by mass transit? I think the numbers are accurate. It's just another attempt to stop the project. Any hopes of stopping this project, even if we don't get the Olympics, is just a dream for those who want to stop it."