From Capital New York:
The New York Cosmos have submitted a bid to build a stadium in Elmont, just a dozen miles from where Major League Soccer wants to erect a stadium of its own, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
M.L.S. has plans to create a second team in the New York market to complement, and compete with, the New York Red Bulls franchise, which is based in Harrison, N.J.
The Cosmos are a new organization. Next season they'll be playing in the sub-major North American Soccer League. Their official position is that they don't necessarily want to be the second M.L.S. team in the New York market. But they are widely believed to want to be that team.
The team responded to a state request for proposals to develop the south lot of the Belmont Park racetrack in Elmont, just over the Queens border in Nassau County.
"I am pleased to inform you that one of the proposals that was submitted includes a comprehensive plan to build a professional soccer arena, shopping, community park, restaurants and a hotel on the south lot," wrote State Senator Jack Martins on Jan. 14 in a letter to the Elmont Coalition for Sustainable Development. "The plan, submitted by the New York Cosmos soccer team, calls for a $400 million investment of private funds. This plan is real, it has been submitted to New York State, and I am proud to have helped foster its submission."
13 comments:
Soccer. Schmoccer. I hate soccer. It borders on the un-American just like the metric system and Centigrade temperature.
Perfect traffic choked spot let the commuters have fun with soccer - there are plenty of reasons now why immigrants can immigrate to Nassau County especially since soccer will move to Belmont where there are plenty of horses to take care of, cut grass and set up tent cities on the grounds as they do in Flushing Meadows Park - Bravo - Belmont Park deserves soccer!
Belmont has its own LIRR station and it wouldn't take away any public parkland.
25,000 seats for - in effect - a minor league team?
Maybe "granny" Shulman will go and do some lobbying out there.
Count on MS#13 gang members as loyal fans.
Their numbers are big in Nassau County.
Soccer??? Please.
The NYC parks department turned two baseball fields in Frank Golden park (behind Target on 20th Ave.) into soccer fields. These field were used by little leagues and CYO baseball teams throughout the spring and summer. Flag football teams used them during the fall for their games.
Drive by these fields in the spring, summer and fall and you'll find them empty. No one playing that new American pastime, soccer.
Again the city panders to the immigrant community and the kids who play traditional sports get screwed.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head, Poster 7. It's all a way to pander to big business (nothing new here) and Hispanics, who, according to all media you see and read these days, have become an influential political force to be reckoned with. We can thank them for reelecting the President and now the rest of the pols in this country are taking notice and strategizing to keep Hispanics in the Democratic fold.
The parks dept fields should be multipurpose the way most HS sports fields are. That way, you get more bang for the buck. A good example is the field next to the old Erie Basin grain silo in Red Hook.
Soccer is pretty popular among middle class WASP types and Euro, Latin, Asian, and African immigrants.
This is a joke. A smoke screen. This area is residential and the Cross Island Parkway is already jammed 24/7. Now if they had said the Nassau Coliseum site, that would make good sense, since it's coming down.
I love the way the picture shows 30 or 40 cars in the parking lot (am I right?). So the stadium seats 150? C'mon, we're not all fools.
Anonymous # 6: several years ago, DAC used those awful fields for their flag football league. The fields were in horrendous condition and of course there was no bathroom. This Frank Golden field was also used several years ago by Bayside Little League. I can't imagine fields with such poor drainage and maintenance being used for any sport.
"...and of course there was no bathroom."
There is a bathroom at the bottopm of 136th street.
And yes, the drainage of the fields is awful as is the drainage at Memorial Field, George Harvey, Little Bay, etc., but that doesn't stop the kids from playing baseball and football there. However it seems to have stopped the soccer players since there aren't any to be found.
Also, many of the kids who do play soccer play for travel teams and soccer clubs and a lot of their games are scheduled on LI where the fields are far superior.
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