Newsday: Islanders and Barclays Center have an opt-out clause

[Bones45]

Can't tell if you're trying to crap on Barclays, but have you ever been to the sound tigers arena?
It's a horseshoe set-up.

http://www.websterbankarena.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205175315
You can't walk around from section 107 to 113. Place isn't as bad as Barclays for hockey
Actually somewhat decent.

LOL.. Hardly an impressive comparison.

I went to a ST game years ago and liked the arena.

 

[MJF]

It goes farther than that. I can't dig up the link (not sure if it's even available on line) but back in the 1980s, there was an interview with Torrey that said that the only way that the Islanders could be in the black would be to make the Stanley Cup finals every year. It's not about the Island, it's about the building -- it was a slap-dash design put up on the cheap largely to preempt the site being used to construct housing, which was an alternate proposed use for the property (some things never change). Heck, true story, the design omitted even a press box -- something the county added in a hurry in the last minute. The original scoreboard was one that was discarded by Hofstra. The team was so desperate for additional revenue streams that they dug into their own pocket to build the few luxury boxes they did have, and to relocate the press box to the rafters so they'd have a few more rows of seats to sell. The site lines were terrific, but virtually every aspect of the design put a hard cap on the amount of money the building could generate. That was a major issue as long ago as the mid 1980s, and became an absolute killer once salaries rose to the level they are today.

The original scoreboard was brought from the Island Garden by the Nets when they relocated from West Hempstead to Uniondale, but, yeah, most of this post is accurate.

Nassau County had an original design of the Coliseum to look a lot like the Spectrum in Philadelphia did, with an upper seating level and was supposed have a capacity of nearly 17,000 people IIRC. The Coliseum had been on the drawing board since the 1960s but it took until 1970 to break ground with politics getting in the way. The result was the design it opened with, seating under 15,000 for hockey.

 

[OlTimeHockey]

SMG is gone. The Barclays folk control the building. Could the Islanders build more boxes out of their own pocket. Sure, if they were ****ing insane and there was anywhere to put them that would not entail a $500 million dollar project to drop the ice floor or rebuild the entire above ground level structure. Pure utter fantasy.

Yeah, NOW they're gone.....the Isles filed a lawsuit on the default in payments afterwards as well.

Now you're saying the Isles could not install luxury boxes where they are now and have to tear down the concrete and install them mid level? OK. They can't hang them like they hung the existing? OK. It has to cost half a billion to do it? OK. We're doomed.

The place looking nicer and having more ameneties and being more enjoyable is lipstick on a pig. We're better off with the obstructed view seating and very limited gate and the quiet rooms. We can't compete with more tickets sold and a better looking arena with better food, better seating, much better sitelines and being in the center of the target demographic (with a very high disposable income relative to the NHL means) and all the improvements because we didn't spend enough! Cancel the Country Life Press expansion right away, tear down the already laid tracks in place and call the Westbury Music Fair and tell them they have some competition to be wary of!

 

[denis]

Any LIRR extension would likely require the developer to subsidize much in the same way the City of New York subsidized the #7 subway line extension to Javits Center. I can't see the MTA and Nassau County paying for what would be a part-time rail service. Not to mention the fact that the current trackage runs along grade level crossing Quentin Roosevelt Blvd and would have to be either elevated or tunneled for the remainder of the trip to the Coliseum . I'm fairly certain the LIRR and TOH will not agree to have the rail link continued at street level.

Yeah. All of that and more, including the cost of electrification. The Newsday article that had the story of the proposal was full of quotes that either politely laughed at it or changed the subject -- such as Mangano pivoting to talk of buses.

 

[denis]

The original scoreboard was brought from the Island Garden by the Nets when they relocated from West Hempstead to Uniondale, but, yeah, most of this post is accurate.

Working from memory here, but that's probably right. Knew they "borrowed" it from somewhere and that it was a pretty bare bones affair.

 

[Bones45]

Those of us from back in the day, will remember the struggle to get a shot clock.

LOL.. Every home game there was a new sign telling Torrey to buy em!

 

[Fist of Gillies]

It goes farther than that. I can't dig up the link (not sure if it's even available on line) but back in the 1980s, there was an interview with Torrey that said that the only way that the Islanders could be in the black would be to make the Stanley Cup finals every year. It's not about the Island, it's about the building -- it was a slap-dash design put up on the cheap largely to preempt the site being used to construct housing, which was an alternate proposed use for the property (some things never change). Heck, true story, the design omitted even a press box -- something the county added in a hurry in the last minute. The original scoreboard was one that was discarded by Hofstra. The team was so desperate for additional revenue streams that they dug into their own pocket to build the few luxury boxes they did have, and to relocate the press box to the rafters so they'd have a few more rows of seats to sell. The site lines were terrific, but virtually every aspect of the design put a hard cap on the amount of money the building could generate. That was a major issue as long ago as the mid 1980s, and became an absolute killer once salaries rose to the level they are today.

I agree with your points about the arena, but if a team is winning, they can charge more for the product. Yes the NVMC needed to be replaced or seriously refurbished, I get that, but by being non-competitive for practically a generation, it completely undermined the ultimate goal.

If the Isles had been a contender (performed as they have the past 4 years) going into the infamous Kate Murray review, Wang gets development rights and this team is still in Nassau. A deal would have been made.

 

[denis]

Those of us from back in the day, will remember the struggle to get a shot clock.

LOL.. Every home game there was a new sign telling Torrey to buy em!

Yup. The guy doing those signs were one section over from where we sat. Kinda of wish we hadn't gotten the shot clock looking back, because right after it went in, things went pretty much to hell.

 

[Bones45]

Get the isles back home, get them winning, get the Coliseum/team profitable.

then charge what you need for tickets, and they shall come.

Winning is key.. and I dont mean... a first round playoff exit.

 

[MJF]

Those of us from back in the day, will remember the struggle to get a shot clock.

LOL.. Every home game there was a new sign telling Torrey to buy em!

LOL!!!! Some of those signs were hilarious. I wish I could remember what some of them said.

Those signs, the fans' bedsheet banners hung around the building, and Dennis (Newsday once called him a leather-lunged scalawag) who sat in the back of section 313 and led a lot of the chants (went on to become a security guard at the Coliseum) gave the Coliseum a lot of its atmosphere in the early 1980s.

I miss those days.

 

[denis]

I agree with your points about the arena, but if a team is winning, they can charge more for the product. Yes the NVMC needed to be replaced or seriously refurbished, I get that, but by being non-competitive for practically a generation, it completely undermined the ultimate goal.

If the Isles had been a contender (performed as they have the past 4 years) going into the infamous Kate Murray review, Wang gets development rights and this team is still in Nassau. A deal would have been made.

We'd like to think so, but I'm not sure. Problem is that the TOH politcos were deathly afraid of anything that might have upset town demographics and loosened their grip on power. We all talk about compromise, but hidden in how the TOH downsized the Lighthouse is that they gutted the housing part by more than 75 percent, which made the whole project collapse as that was a vital part of what made the whole thing work. That hasn't changed. A couple of years back, Ratner in discussing the property development said they want for food and entertainment because that was the only thing that was both economically feasible and permitted by the TOH. Paraphrasing, he said, we don't need more stores or offices because there is too much vacant inventory right now. What we need is housing, but the TOH won't allow it.

Thanks Kate.

 

[Bones45]

LOL!!!! Some of those signs were hilarious. I wish I could remember what some of them said.

Those signs, the fans' bedsheet banners hung around the building, and Dennis (Newsday once called him a leather-lunged scalawag) who sat in the back of section 313 and led a lot of the chants (went on to become a security guard at the Coliseum) gave the Coliseum a lot of its atmosphere in the early 1980s.

I miss those days.

We were spoiled -- in so many ways...

Today? We have a 1hr plus horrible commute to a meaningless/souless cavern to watch Bailey skate the perimeter on a average at best team.

Boo.

 

[denis]

LOL!!!! Some of those signs were hilarious. I wish I could remember what some of them said.

Those signs, the fans' bedsheet banners hung around the building, and Dennis (Newsday once called him a leather-lunged scalawag) who sat in the back of section 313 and led a lot of the chants (went on to become a security guard at the Coliseum) gave the Coliseum a lot of its atmosphere in the early 1980s.

I miss those days.

Me too. Remember Dennis fondly. We were in 314, same row. "Hey Hood, you suck" After the Newsday piece, we all called him scalawag.

The sparklers, the signs (we made some of those -- what can I say, we were kids, relatively speaking), the chants, all of it went away -- those who missed that and think the the Coliseum was special, would have been even more blown away by what went down in those early years. You think the playoffs last year were loud? Ha, you have no clue of how loud loud can be, but if you were in the Coliseum in the late 1970s early 1980s, you know.

That's why it absolutely kills me to say some of what I have been saying about the Coliseum; the memories I have of the great old days are irreplaceable. The problem is that is that's all they were now, memories. I absolutely hated the state that the building got to; it's been like sitting in a 20 year wake watching the corpse of a loved one decay.

 

[MJF]

Me too. Remember Dennis fondly. We were in 314, same row. "Hey Hood, you suck" After the Newsday piece, we all called him scalawag.

The sparklers, the signs (we made some of those -- what can I say, we were kids, relatively speaking), the chants, all of it went away -- those who missed that and think the the Coliseum was special, would have been even more blown away by what went down in those early years. You think the playoffs last year were loud? Ha, you have no clue of how loud loud can be, but if you were in the Coliseum in the late 1970s early 1980s, you know.

That's why it absolutely kills me to say some of what I have been saying about the Coliseum; the memories I have of the great old days are irreplaceable. The problem is that is that's all they were now, memories. I absolutely hated the state that the building got to; it's been like sitting in a 20 year wake watching the corpse of a loved one decay.

Do you people want the Islanders to win? Then what do you cheer? LET'S GO ISLANDERS!

I sat in 315 in those days. Heard every one of Dennis' chants.

The sparklers during the National Anthem. The way we were able to smuggle bottles of champagne in for Game 4 of the 1983 Finals. The "Live From New York, It's Tuesday Night" banner mocking the Boston Bruins fans in the semifinals who said they'd beat us at the Coliseum (not with choke-ass Pete Peeters in net you won't). The fans going absolutely crazy with Let's Go Islanders chants, and the organist responding in kind, while the ice was being resurface after warm ups . So many good memories of the Coliseum. That's why I get so pissed with some of the posters on this board who tell me the Coliseum was nothing special. I guess I should just chalk it up to time marching on but it is burned into my memories.

If you don't remember the Coliseum in the early 80s was you probably weren't there.

 

[MJF]

Me too. Remember Dennis fondly. We were in 314, same row. "Hey Hood, you suck" After the Newsday piece, we all called him scalawag.

The sparklers, the signs (we made some of those -- what can I say, we were kids, relatively speaking), the chants, all of it went away -- those who missed that and think the the Coliseum was special, would have been even more blown away by what went down in those early years. You think the playoffs last year were loud? Ha, you have no clue of how loud loud can be, but if you were in the Coliseum in the late 1970s early 1980s, you know.

That's why it absolutely kills me to say some of what I have been saying about the Coliseum; the memories I have of the great old days are irreplaceable. The problem is that is that's all they were now, memories. I absolutely hated the state that the building got to; it's been like sitting in a 20 year wake watching the corpse of a loved one decay.

It wasn't just the building. The team was neglected by it's various owners the same way. It was like watching a loved one with a terminal disease die a slow, painful death.

 

[YesCubed]

I thought this thread was about the opt out clause. Not Negative Barclay's Discussion part 3

 

[The Underboss]

Guys come on!! Focus on the OUT CLAUSE!!! This really isn't that difficult.

 

[Lame Lambert]

Guys come on!! Focus on the OUT CLAUSE!!! This really isn't that difficult.

We need an in-clause thread

 

[Bones45]

Guys come on!! Focus on the OUT CLAUSE!!! This really isn't that difficult.

Is it really a problem that the conversation went to people reminiscing?

 

[The Underboss]

Is it really a problem that the conversation went to people reminiscing?

Yes. Go find the Nassau Coliseum thread and do your reminiscing there.

 

[Strummergas]

 

[Bones45]

Yes. Go find the Nassau Coliseum thread and do your reminiscing there.

Just lock every thread then, eh?

 

[Lame Lambert]

Yes. Go find the Nassau Coliseum thread and do your reminiscing there.

 

[Doshell Propivo]

Just lock every thread then, eh?

Only the ones you post in.

 

[Steve55]

I am not sure if NYC would provide Islanders 4-500M to get out Barclays to set up shop elsewhere, perhaps a rink next to Citi Field, within the next decade. I just can't see the Coliseum ever being a viable option with reduced seating