Sadly, Very Little Enlightenment on the Lighthouse
BDGallof | Dec 03, 2009 | Comments 11
Hey, did you know Brooklyn is in play? Hey, would that be an E4 or E5???
No Eklund is not expounding on the Lighthouse with his rumor system. Instead, it is the kind of flotsam and jetsam that is making the rounds. However, someone better tell Brooklyn who is set to break ground with an architectural plan that is basketball only.
In fact, that was cited just a few weeks ago at one hearing, which was not denied by those Atlantic Yards principals. In fact, the answer was as follows:
“We’ve looked at the revenue streams and feel very, very comfortable, and numerous people will come out and show that they’re comfortable with the structure,” Gregory Carey of Goldman’s public sector and infrastructure banking group.
Carey and his group are the underwriters of the Ratner project and is the guy who put the deals for the Yankees and Mets together for their venues. Nowhere in that answer is a denial that the size of the new venue they are going with is not anything but basketball. For the question posed was putting forth the point that the facilities now doesn’t allow space for hockey at all.
So his answer is….big whoop.
So, it doesn’t exactly sound like somehow the Isles will just sneak right in. And if they do, they better work on their three point shots.
Still smoking the Brooklyn peace pipe? Here is an example of what is going on with the battle between residents and those proponents. Are they options? Yes. Just the other day was another court battle and win for the developers over there.
To add to it all…
Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn and Willets Point, Queens have a wonderful sidecar to all of this, which we haven’t quite experienced with that the hooting and hollering over in Nassau County. They have people who live there who don’t want it there at all.
Now does this mean these are not options? No, of course they have SOME validity. Anything can be worked out. But only within reason.
Despite a tooth and nail fight by residents, they are losing the war trying to overturn the eminent domain. However, they also have 3 other lawsuits against the Atlantic Yards developers. Queens has done the same, recently knocking down a lawsuit by business owners there.
So, how in hell is Brooklyn in play? Seriously? Really? How? With their former architect booted who had the hockey/basketball venue as a layout…they replaced it with a far cheaper and quicker setup that is too small for ice hockey, unless the Isles are going to farm a pee wee team. Oh wait, that was last year.
So, as Brooklyn rushes to dig into the ground based on design that WILL NOT fit a hockey ice surface, are they going to stop based on rumors and suddenly rethink it? Not necessarily. They are rushing because the economic recession forced them to move faster, cheaper and with a scaled down approach. Hmm…scaled down, huh. Fancy that.
Queens too has been mentioned around and about…which seems more likely since the Lighthouse Project most assuredly threw an RFP their way before the deadline. But, since that breaking of ground is a long way off, maybe that’s not such a good leverage rumor anymore.
And, folks, isn’t this all about leverage in the end? I mean, there need to be some sort of hot rumor or onus because let me tell you…the ToH isn’t buying it.
Likely options? Not so fast, quick draw. The likeliest option is the one staring us all in the face, where the Lighthouse Project principals must reduce the size and scope, lest it be a foregone conclusion. If Charles Wang, as it has been boldly stated, wants to be in Nassau County…well, now is the time to show it.
The Change In Climate:
Ed Mangano, as I reported here and on the Huffington Post weeks ago…won the election. Absentee ballots tend to run older, older on Long Island tend to run right, so lo and behold, not surprising to the ToH, Lighthouse Project or anyone else… Suozzi tanked,conceding the race.
But, hey, let’s not all start crying over Tom Suozzi, the so-called “friend of the Lighthouse”. Here is a guy who politicized it like a lightning rod, and meanwhile he and his party seemed to forget he was actually running for something. This man and the people around him were so stuck on big projects and looking to move up politically, they lost the 8 year footing they had made.
Suozzi and Democratic involvment and support of this project on a political wrought landscape on Long Island has basically put the Lighthouse Project and Isles fans in a limbo. Like a vampire invited in, they sucked the blood, dropped the puck, “brokered” the handshake but also played it as a political card only to lose. Charles Wang made a supreme misguided mistake to once again open up trust to someone who DID NOT have the Islanders organization nor it’s fans best interest at heart.
So let’s not all start playing the violin like somehow Suozzi is a victim. There is only one victim in all this…Islander fans.
Now, after months of petulance, obnoxiousness, playing the media, press and bloggers, we now sit in their Media Silence as we all watch Isles and Lighthouse Project leverage fly out a window.
But, oh…that’s right, there haven’t been any meetings. Right? Riiiiiighhhhht. Look at the fine print after that mystifyingly statement that simply stunned me when I know for a fact they have…more than once. But here is that little fine print...see it? Look harder…
“No meaningful meetings since October”
Oh, how sneaky…making it seem that they had no meeting at all. It is very likely they haven’t met in November thanks to the election and confusion thereafter that had BOTH sides adopt a wait-and-see attitude.
Hmmm, tricky words, huh. Must be some Public Relations whiz playing around at something.
Pointblank
Thanks to many Islander fans and blog fans emailing and tweeting for me to respond to the latest blog from Pointblank. Chris Botta is an excellent blogger with excellent resources, and though I don’t quite agree with his latest one, it doesn’t mean he’s lost integrity. He happens to see it one way, I see it completely different. If we all said the same thing, how boring would that be? He’s a guy who bled Isles blue and orange for 20 years as an employee. He has solid Islanders and Lighthouse contacts, despite the “media blackout”.
Chris and I have had our good times and bad. I even shot his video in Freeport when he wanted to speak out to fans back in August to not make the Lighthouse Hearing about him and his site. The night before I was to leave NY for vacation no less.
But I won’t make any bones about it…I don’t buy all that was said in his latest wholesale. I hear the Brooklyn talk…which has been bandied by him before, and also by those close to Charles Wang to me back near October 3rd, and scratch my head. I even skewered it back in a previous blog. But I do not doubt that Brooklyn is being talked about by those around Wang. Maybe to offset attention to the Queens option? Or just to get something…anything…to ply between the negotiation between Wang and the ToH.
Borough President Marty Markowitz has been the only person really talking about hockey….how he’d love them to come over. Except this is a blowhard who, much like the Queens Chamber of Commerce guy who says “Islanders” every chance he gets for public facetime. Meanwhile, bloggers in Brooklyn had caught the discrepancy a long while ago.
So Let’s Get Back To Reality
To me, it’s not about Queens or Brooklyn. We will worry about and consider that when we get that.
It is about Nassau County. The Lighthouse has to swallow some pride and wake up and smell the coffee. As does the Republican regime who is bouncing around the not-very-bright idea of perhaps re-looking at the lease deal Suozzi did for Wang.
Both sides here need to get off the high horse and get down to business. And fast.
If Charles Wang won’t reduce the size and scope more than 10%, might as well go to Queens or Brooklyn and see how it goes. 10% won’t cut it. That ride to Brooklyn or Queens is not paved in gold, not easy, and has a large issue at hand that Nassau Coliseum does not. New York City using Eminent Domain on citizens for private sector use. Sure the developers have won the latest court battle, but there are a lot more bumps in the road than Long Island political guile, hubris and ego.
Maybe it’s time for Long Islanders to lose some of that and make something on Long Island actually worthwhile.
Just my take on the subject. But then again, this isn’t my full-time gig. I can’t sit and worry about pleasing the audience or building one. I need to please myself, and hopefully that take is an honest objective one. Thanks for the support.
BD
Filed Under: Featured • New York Islanders
Thanks for your input…My fear is that Murray holds a grudge against Wanger… He supported McElroy by having her at the Coliseum to campaign and he was all buddy, buddy with Suozzi for a while there, blaming Murray and the ToH for stalling when, in all honesty, wasn’t the whole deal in the countys hands for like 2 years before handing it over to the ToH???Also, having Suozzi drop the ceremonial puck, right before elections…Obvioulsy theirs nothing wrong with any of this but I don’t trust Murray as far as I can throw her, lol…
KO21 – Trust is to Politics like Love is to War – It just doesn’t make any sense. Hopefully this “media blackout” will turn in to a positive for the New York Islanders and their fans. If Murray is looking for more information, give it to her and follow town procedure. As long as something gets done and it improves the area around the coliseum, so be it. Not to mention the importance of keeping the team where it belongs – on Long Island.
BD,
I am sure many of your readers were pleased to read an unattached, unbiased assessment of this nonsense. Also, your analysis makes sense. It seems that the Lighhouse made some really poor political moves.
It didn’t take a professional election forecaster to predict Murray would crush McElroy. Why would the Islanders attach themselves to a losing battle? Was it out of spite?
We know Isles fans like to poke fun at Charles Wang. We always hear about Wang’s impetuous business persona. Could it be that simple- that Wang and the Lighthouse were too stubborn to swallow any pride on this project. Every potential concession suggested by the town that surfaced in meetings or through the media was labeled an insult by the Lighthouse. That’s just terrible diplomacy.
Even if the alleged D’Amato connection soured Wang’s opinion of NY/Long Island/Republican politics, he had to understand that he needed to negotiate with them to get his project completed. While it can certainly be argued that the town did not negotiate in good faith, Wang and Co. didn’t do themselves any favors by fighting political obstructionism with passive aggressive posturing. Sometimes one needs to just grin and bear it.
But, even if Wang can plead ignorance or bullheadedness, shouldn’t the other Lighthouse principals have a better grasp of the political environment. I have a hard time believing Scott Rechler, an established and highly experienced real estate developer, would put his stamp of approval on any of Wang’s unproductive posturing.
Public relations decisions are most certainly discussed by Wang and his associates. It’s shocking to think that they agreed to make so many of these boneheaded moves. The political manuevering of the Lighthouse has been subpar, at best. What a mess.
“Why would the Islanders attach themselves to a losing battle? Was it out of spite?” – Pete.
Yes, I think it was out of spite on the behalf of Wang.
some clarification is needed, the mcelroy campaign was not hosted at the coliseum by the islanders or the lighthouse group. for all three games a booth was purchased-same as verizon and all other corporate sponsors do. while i can see how it does create the illusion that the islanders were supporting the campaign-that is the furthest from the truth. the campaign felt that islanders fans were a core constituency that needed to be reached and purchasing a booth at various games would be the best way to do so. there was no giveaway by the islanders or the lighthouse group.
former campaign manger,
joe conte
Thanks for the reply. With all due respect, the New York Islanders never make a video announcement on the jumbotron that fans can visit the Verizon or Newsday booth at gate 6 and 9. They did that for McElroy. Your point would be well taken if the video component was part of the deal that the campaign purchased. If it was a friendly gesture from the Islanders, it wasn’t a good move. Either way, if I was the campaign manager, I would have promoted the candidate at the coliseum, too.
B.D – While Willets Point is a few years from breaking ground, I believe getting things done in the NYC Boroughs are more likely then the TOH. No residents are being forced away, just an area that looks like it was hit by an atomic weapon. The Iron Triangle is an embarassment to Queens, LI, and NYC. If the LH was built on that area imagine how awesome a complex that contained the Mets, Islanders, US Open, etc would be. While I agree that the TOH is our main concern and extremlly important, I would not discount Queens.
BD I disagree on Brooklyn because a recent issue of the NY post quotes court documents that says the Isles could make Brooklyn home. View the link below:
http://www.nypost.com/p/nets_half_off_at_brooklyn_arena_Fn7k4wmOcWMIHSWK8Uts5H
There have been 2, actually I think 3 designs of the Barclays Centre that have been approved, at least one includes hockey. The Isles will be in Brooklyn by October 2013. There is no doubt, it’s a done deal. LHP is dead, it needs to be reduced by 30-35%.
Newsday article 12-9-09
Developer Bruce Ratner has just released a report affirming his keen interest in attracting the New York Islanders to his planned Brooklyn Arena in the borough’s downtown area.
Ratner’s report, prepared by Convention, Sports, Leisure International of Plano, Texas to help sell bonds to build the arena, comes a week after Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, one of the most prominent backers of the Lighthouse Project, lost his re-election bid to Republican Ed Mangano. The Lighthouse was to include a renovated Nassau Coliseum. During the campaign, Mangano was lukewarm about the Lighthouse Project.
Additionally, Lighthouse developers Charles Wang and Scott Rechler have been unhappy with what they see as the slow pace of the approval process for the Lighthouse.
“The New York Islanders could potentially become a tenant of the proposed area . . . moving from their current home of Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum,” the report states. The area, the report says, is currently designed to house the New Jersey Nets basketball team.
“If built as planned, the arena would need to be retrofitted to accommodate the ice-making abilities the [National Hockey League] requires for its franchises,” the report says.
Wang has threatened to move the Islanders, possibly to Kansas City, if the project is not approved.
John Meindl, president of Sportsbrandmedia Inc., a sports marketing company in Rockville Centre, said Ratner “sees a window of opportunity” following Suozzi’s loss. On his [Ratner's] part it’s a brilliant move.”
But, Meindl said, the Islanders – a woeful team for years now – might have difficulty attracting fans to downtown Brooklyn from Long Island.
HOW DO YOU LIKE DEM APPLES? RATNER WANTS NYI IN BROOKLYN AND WILL RETROFIT ARENA FOR HOCKEY!!
“However, someone better tell Brooklyn who is set to break ground with an architectural plan that is basketball only.”
Sad, very little enlightenment on the Lighthouse! Sad indeed.