NEW YORK (AP) – In the midst of the wining and dining, the celebrity schmoozing and the jazz at Lincoln Center, the 13 delegates charged with selecting a host city for the 2012 Summer Games will visit the epicenter of New York’s Olympic bid infighting: Madison Square Garden.

“The World’s Most Famous Arena” serves incongruously as a prime piece of the city’s Olympic proposal, and the focal point of efforts to scuttle the stadium construction so vital to landing the Games. Its owners remain locked in a bitter feud with Olympic organizers and the mayor – yet a warm reception was planned for the International Olympic Committee.

The Evaluation Commission will pop into the Garden on day two of its four-day tour of New York, one of five cities vying for the Olympics. The committee already toured Madrid and London, with Moscow and Paris left to visit before its July 6 decision in Singapore.

New York officials plan a razzle-dazzle stay for the delegates, including dinner and drinks at the Upper East Side townhouse of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The committee, which will stay at the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park, arrives Sunday night and leaves Thursday.

Events kick off Monday with a Rockefeller Center pep rally near its famed skating rink, as the IOC members spend the day in meetings at the Plaza. Former senator Bill Bradley, a 1964 basketball gold medalist, will address the IOC group a day later.

On Wednesday night, the delegation will enjoy a night of entertainment at Jazz at Lincoln Center followed by dinner with the mayor. And from their hotel, the visitors will enjoy a view of “The Gates,” the art installation spread across 23 miles of Central Park footpaths.

The city is already swathed in Olympic logos and signs promoting its bid. Billboards, bus shelters and street poles are decorated, along with the city’s 4,000 subway cars, 7,000 buses and 13,000 medallion taxi cabs.

“New York City will be pulling out all the stops for this critical visit,” promised Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, the prime mover behind the city’s Olympic bid. Visits are planned to all the Olympic venues, although the biggest one – the proposed West Side stadium – remains nothing more than an architect’s vision.

Nowhere is opposition to the stadium more vehement than inside the Garden, property of the Dolan family-owned Cablevision and proposed home of Olympic basketball.

The Dolans – don’t expect them to glad-hand the IOC members – are doing everything possible to undercut the proposed stadium on the Hudson River, from hiring lobbyists to making their own preemptive $600 million bid for the property. They fear the new stadium, just a few blocks west of the Garden, could cut into their business.

Tempers in the feud between the Garden and the mayor grew shorter as the IOC visited loomed larger. Last week, Bloomberg attacked the Dolans as un-American for their efforts to undermine the project.

“This company says, “To hell with America. We don’t care,”‘ the mayor trumpeted about Cablevision.

Both sides downplayed the significance of the delegation’s visit. Spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt said Garden officials weren’t even sure of the timing for the stop, while NYC2012 spokesman Laz Benitez said he anticipated a smooth meeting.

Doctoroff even planned to join other NYC2012 officials and the committee in a rare rapprochement between the two sides.

AP-ES-02-19-05 1316EST