Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired the attorney who was former Gov. Richard Codey's top lawyer to evaluate the city's deal for a downtown arena.

Paul Fader, who as chief counsel to Codey led the negotiations with the Giants and Jets that led to a deal for a new football stadium in the Meadowlands, said yesterday the Booker administration has given him a mandate to take a second look at the entire transaction for the $350 million arena.

Less than a month on the job, Booker has threatened to back out of the deal, which calls for the city to contribute $210 million toward a new home for hockey's Devils. While the mayor has said little about the deal since taking office July 1, in hiring Fader he has made it clear he remains unsatisfied with a project his predecessor, Sharpe James, viewed as a legacy of 20 years in office.

"I've been asked to review the transactions and report to my client with respect to that," Fader, a top contributor to Booker's campaign, said yesterday. "Any decision about actions will be made by the city."

The city will pay Fader $175 per hour for his work on the arena. He has been given no time frame.

During Booker's recent mayoral campaign, Fader raised and contributed $10,000 on behalf of a group called Friends of Paul T. Fader, according to reports filed with the state's Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Desiree Peterkin-Bell, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said Fader's support for the Booker campaign had no bearing on his hiring.

"What it says is this deal needs to be revisited," Peterkin-Bell said. "Based on everything that had been negotiated previously, this needs to be revisited overall, completely.

Peterkin-Bell said Booker has no immediate plans to order a stop to the work on the arena but is not ruling it out in the future.

"We're not making any rash decisions," she said. "But it's not until you dig deeper that you get a sense of what vagaries exist."

Devils principal owner Jeff Vanderbeek said he has no problem with Booker's action. "I would have done the exact same thing," Vanderbeek said. "He is the mayor of the largest city in New Jersey and this is the most high-profile project. He should take a close look at it."

Richard Monteilh, who negotiated the arena deal as business administrator for James, said Fader understands complicated sports facility projects and should help Booker understand the value of the agreement.

"Hopefully, he can get them on the other side of the negotiating table with us supporting the project," said Monteilh, who is in charge of the city's Downtown Core Redevelopment Corp., an agency overseeing development of the arena and downtown.

Fader's review will take place at a crucial time for the project at Broad and Lafayette streets, where the steel shell of the structure grows by the day. The Devils started construction last year and have had the project on a fast track because they want to begin playing there in the fall of 2007.

The aggressive schedule forced the Devils to begin construction before finalizing the design of the arena or receiving a raft of permits they need to complete the project, including all permits for the interior of the building. Construction experts said that is not uncommon on such a large project, but keeping the arena on schedule will require the full commitment of the city, which could cause delays by dragging its feet on the approvals.

"The Devils have building permits for foundations and footing and for their structural steel, but nothing else," said Neil Mitgard, a Newark construction code official. "They can't do work on anything else besides those areas."

Mitgard said the Devils attempted to press ahead last month with preliminary work on the arena's plumbing system. But when the city learned of the activity, it ordered the team to stop the work.

Vanderbeek said the plumbing work was the result of an error in paperwork that is now being fixed. He added that he expected no additional problems. "The city is doing its job and everything is moving along," he said.

Monteilh, who has worked closely with Vanderbeek for three years, said, "I don't see any problems with permits going forward, but these are complicated projects."

Codey said Fader will be able to "understand the skinny from both sides, the taxpayers' side and the owner's side. He'll know what works and what doesn't."

The Devils' lease for the arena calls for the city to receive $2 million a year in rent from the team; 7 percent of all luxury suite sales, concession sales, general advertising revenue and naming rights; and 4 percent of all gross revenues from other events.

Booker has made two other moves aimed at exerting more control over the arena through the Downtown Core Redevelopment Corp.

At last week's meeting of the redevelopment agency, the board voted to require a second signature for all checks for more than $500. Newark council members Carlos Gonzalez and Augusto Amador, both Booker allies, are the newest additions to the agency's board, and Gonzalez will have to sign all checks exceeding $500.

In addition, the board voted to hire the firm of Rosenfarb Winters to perform an audit of the agency.

"We are going to see how the money has been dispersed. We don't know if we should be concerned," Gonzalez said.