New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that the Islanders will play all home games at Nassau Coliseum for this year’s playoffs and all of next season as they await their new Belmont Park arena’s opening in 2021. Thus brings to an end the Brooklyn Islanders experiment, which everyone knew was a terrible idea at the time as the Brooklyn Nets‘ arena was designed to be too small for hockey and also Brooklyn is not in Nassau County where the Islanders’ fan base lives, but everyone also pretended it made total sense because then-owner Charles Wang wanted to give a middle finger to Nassau County for not approving his arena plans there, revenge really isn’t the best way to run a railroad, is it?
(And yes, it’s a little weird that the governor announced this, but also not that weird, because Cuomo has a long history of swooping in to show up in places where he can take credit for changes of plans. We should probably be glad that the announcement wasn’t made by Billy Joel.)
The state of New York has provided $6 million toward an $8.5 million renovation of the Coliseum to make it more NHL-ready for its single season as sole home ice, because, as the state said at the time, this will “build momentum and excitement for the transformational redevelopment of Belmont Park,” and why should either the Islanders or the Coliseum’s owner, Nassau County, or operator, Mikhail Prokhorov, pay for that when taxpayers in Buffalo can foot the bill?
Anyway, all this is leading up to today’s news, which is that some new renderings of the Islanders’ planned Belmont Park arena have dropped, and they are, um, interesting:
Now, I know we’ve been over how the artists paid to draw renderings are just pulling from a bucket of clip-art “entourage” people, but these people are exceptionally odd. The ones in the lobby image appear to be on their way to job interviews, and they’re almost all choosing to take the nearly-empty stairs over the even-more-empty escalator. The people in the other images at least include a few Islanders jerseys, but everyone seems far more interested in chatting and drinking than watching hockey (there is, in fact, no hockey to be seen anywhere except on video screens). And everyone is preternaturally young and slim, which have you seen what actual Islanders fans look like? The whole scene looks more like a high-end wine bar with an odd hockey theme, except of course at a bar way more people than this would be looking at their phones.
Maybe it all means nothing more than the mood the renderer was in that day, but it’s hard not to come away from these images with a sense that somebody is trying to sell a new hockey arena as hip and trendy and not a place where people go to drink beer and shout at people on ice skates. I have no idea who the audience for this might be — stores that might want to locate at the mall being built nearby? people who’ve heard about this “hockey” thing but never gone to a game because they didn’t think it was Instagrammable enough? — but clearly somebody signed off on it. While I’m generally a fan of Hanlon’s Razor, sometimes reading too much into things is the only way to make our own fun.
Long Island: The water is cancer but hey we got a modern hockey arena.
Also I thought Brooklyn was less of a middle finger to Nassau and more Wang increasing the team’s worth before selling em.
The people who bought it are moving it back to Nassau as fast as possible, so did having the Brooklyn connection really increase the team value? I guess maybe, but it seems like a lot to go through.
My sense at the time and now is that Wang wanted to throw a hissy fit, and Brooklyn was the easiest place to do so.
As I recall, CW moved them there for an annual payment with the majority of actual game revenues going to the arena owner. It was a healthy payment ($40m?), but it left most of the variable revenues on the books of the arena owner (for better or worse).
This would mean he thought $1m per game plus a small share of concessions and tickets was better than he could do at the coliseum. That’s not “Coyotes level” bad, but it’s bad.
$53 million/year, if memory serves.
Possible that it was an escalating payment starting at $40 million, but I don’t believe so.
Thanks Ben. I looked and looked and could not find any firm data on what they were getting (though Bleacher report has extensive contemporary reporting on how the move to Brooklyn was going to hurt the Rangers…. Look Out!)
Regardless, $1m-1.25m a game in exchange for the majority of ticket, concession and parking revenue in a market like Brooklyn is pretty weak. And one of the accurate Bleacher Report stories from just months into the 25 year deal had both sides desperately wanting out.
It was a marriage that was never going to work.
YES YES YES CHAMPIONS!!!
Though the first time I couldn’t help but read it as YES YES YES CHARDONNAY!!!
The wine bar focus will make a lot more sense once the building is finally announced as Barefoot Contessa Arena.
Vaportecture looks like “Logan’s Run 2020.”
Please give the render a copy of “Vaportecture” by Neil DeMause.
Let’s hope that having a replica of the Stanley Cup on permanent display in the Loge Lounge will cause someone to have an obstructed view.
“yes, yes, yes” so the LED board just tweets out random “When Harry Met Sally” quotes? I order what she ordered.
Cross platform promotion. Somebody somewhere is paying for those quotes. Once Joel hears about this, expect that ribbon board to be filled with his lyrics.
“Hot Funk, Cool Punk Even if it’s Old Junk…” etc.
Download now at Jtunes.com…