Governor Cuomo gifting Belmont Park developers with a train station

NY Post


A controversial plan to bring a new $1.2 billion arena and entertainment venue to state-owned Belmont Park will now include a $105 million full-service stop on the Long Island Railroad, Gov. Cuomo announced Monday.

The station serving Belmont, NY, is a huge score for the New York Islanders arena project and will be situated between the Queens Village and Bellerose stations on the LIRR’s Main Line, just east of the Cross Island Parkway.

A press release put out by the governor’s office claimed it will the cost the arena developers – a partnership that includes the owners of both the Islanders and New York Mets — $97 million of the estimated $105 million price-tag.

However, state officials later clarified that the developers are only paying $30 million up front with the remaining $67 million to be covered by a no-interest, multi-decade state loan. The state will pick up the remaining $8 million.

The news didn’t sit well with project opponents.

“Obviously the State of New York wants to play hide the puck, and pretend that arena developers are paying for a massive transportation project instead of the taxpayers and commuters, and they buried that actual fact in the fine print. That is a disrespect, and cardinal breach of public trust,”said Tammie S. Williams of the Belmont Park Community Coalition.

Was the Nassau Coliseum deal a play-to-pay transaction?

From the NY Post:

One of Gov. Cuomo’s biggest donors has landed a $1 billion-plus contract to develop the land surrounding Nassau Coliseum — infuriating other bidders whose proposals were solicited, then discarded, by government officials.

“It’s pure pay-to-play,” said one of the developers frozen out of the mega deal who told The Post he wants a federal investigation.

The developer, along with 16 others, submitted proposals this summer at the behest of Nassau County, which was looking to finally transform the sprawling property around the newly renovated stadium, which is now mostly a parking lot.

But the county didn’t follow through with the proposals — making an unexpected announcement in early September that it would instead award the “Nassau Hub” project to a joint venture that included Scott Rechler’s company, RXR Realty Investments. The plan includes two hotels, 500 housing units and office and biotech research facilities, along with 200,000 square feet of retail space.

Rechler is a Cuomo-appointed member of the MTA board, and a former Cuomo pick on the Port Authority board, who — along with his family members and corporations — has donated at least $548,982 to the governor’s campaigns since 2009.

He is also a big donor to Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, and was a member of her transition team before she took office in January 2018. Rechler, his family and company have given $50,000 to Curran’s campaign.

Ratner wins Coliseum bid

From the Queens Courier:

Nassau Events Center, LLC an affiliate of Barclays Center builder Forest City Ratner Companies, announced Thursday that it won the bid to renovate Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Nassau Events was picked over the Madison Square Garden Company, and will oversee a $229 million renovation of the Long Island sports arena.

Arena owners battle on Long Island

From Crains:

Out on Long Island, it is shaping up as the heavyweight bout of the decade—the Knockout in Nassau County. It's a winner-take-all contest in which the prize, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming decades, is the right to rebuild and run the badly faded Nassau Coliseum.

In one corner stands a team captained by Madison Square Garden Co., a squad led by hometown heroes James Dolan and Scott Rechler, aided by MSG Chief Executive Hank Ratner. The Dolans control the island's biggest cable television network and newspaper, while Rechler is the island's largest office landlord. In the other corner is the Barclays Center team. Call them the Brooklyn Globetrotters, coached by developer Bruce Ratner with a bench that includes Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov and Jay Z.

Round 1 in the contest kicked off in May, with the announcement of four bidders, which was narrowed to just two the following month. Final proposals for the 63-acre property in Uniondale were submitted on Aug. 9. Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano is expected to announce a victor any day.

Both sides are aggressively swinging for the prize, which includes a share of ticket sales to events, dinner bills, bar tabs and receipts from the shops that both bidders plan to erect around the arena. The winner will control the property for 20 to 30 years.

Local officials say they are delighted at how the bout has shaped up—especially after two previous taxpayer-financed attempts to revamp the Coliseum went nowhere. Those setbacks prompted the Islanders hockey team to skate off to the Barclays Center, which will be its home as early as the 2014-2015 season.

"We're thrilled we have two industry giants prepared to reinvent the Coliseum," said Mr. Mangano.

For MSG, the contest is an opportunity to add another gem to the crown of its ever-expanding entertainment-venue business, which includes managing Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater and the LA Forum. For Barclays, coming off a blockbuster inaugural year at its downtown Brooklyn arena, winning the Coliseum contract could mark the first step toward the launch of a business that not only competes with the Garden in New York City but around the world.

You can keep your peanuts and crack jacks...

From NBC:

A new study of health violations at the nation's 107 sports venues find some gross oversights, and New York establishments are among the worst offenders.

Nearly one-third of all stadiums and arenas have been cited for at least one "major" health violation, the ESPN study found.

ESPN tallied up each arena's percentages of "critical violations," or cases in which vendors sold food that "might pose a serious risk for foodborne illnesses."

Offenses in New York range from food not kept a the proper temperature --like warm chicken -- to "mouse excreta" and dead fruit flies.

Madison Square Garden ranked the worst, where 61 percent of MSG vendors were cited this year for unsanitary conditions. Inspectors also observed large amounts of mouse droppings throughout establishments, the study found.

Yankee Stadium and Citi Field rated only slightly better, with 48 percent of vendors cited in The Bronx and 45 in Flushing Meadows.

Nassau Coliseum was the only New York-area establishment that didn't have any violations, according to the survey.

MSG and Yankee officials alike said the violations were remedied immediately following the inspections.

Limiting the Lighthouse

From Fox 5:

An ongoing battle to develop 77 acres of prime real estate surrounding the New York Islanders' hockey arena had town officials and county brass feuding Monday over the size and scope of what should be built there.

The county, which owns the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and the land around it, has expressed general support for Islanders' owner Charles Wang's vision to develop the property into a $3.8 billion housing, retail and office complex with a refurbished coliseum as its centerpiece.

The property is one of the last remaining large parcels of undeveloped land in Nassau County, which considers itself America's "first suburb," because it is home to the post-World War II Levittown development.

Hempstead Town leaders, who have zoning jurisdiction over the property, proposed their own development plan Monday, essentially cutting Wang's proposal in half.

Wang's Lighthouse Project, first proposed in 2003 and amended several times since, calls for 35-story residential and office towers. Hempstead's proposal would limit building to no higher than a nine-story hotel currently occupying part of the land.

Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray said the scaling back of the project would address concerns of residents who are worried about the impact of traffic and other lifestyle issues if Wang's larger project were approved.

Too many arenas spoil the revenue

From the NY Times:

By the time the arena in Brooklyn, which will be called Barclays Center, is built, there will be a total of nearly 100,000 seats to fill, 365 days a year.

For most of the last 30 years, there were only three arenas in the New York area: the Garden, Nassau Coliseum and the Izod Center, which opened in 1981 as the Brendan Byrne Arena. Each facility, at one time or another, was home to at least two major sports franchises. But in New York, as in the rest of the country, teams have sought and obtained new buildings — a trend that has contributed to a glut of arenas.

All of this competition can eat deeply into revenues.

The competition in the New York area is not just for fans and performers, but also for public subsidies, corporate sponsors and well-heeled tenants for luxury suites.

Interesting. This very problem was the reason an arena at Atlantic Terminal was eliminated from consideration by the state back in 1985:

So what changed in all that time? Why does the city need an arena there now when we have even more of them now than we had 24 years ago?