Tomorrow, the future of the New York Islanders. Polls open in T-Minus 6 hours. I'm shaking. this team is my passion. How... the ****.... am I supposed to sleep tonight? I can beat you over the head with numbers. I could do that til the cows come home. I could talk about the lunacy of the opposition plan of PSLs on a Hockey Team (When the New York Yankees cant sell PSLs!) or I could bare it out like this: If Nassau County loses the New York Islanders, they will lose 25 million a year in revenue, their only major concert sports and entertainment venue, have taxes go up to offset said loss in revenue, watch 3,000 jobs leave the area, watch all surrounding businesses suffer and or die, and gain an 80 acre parking lot in Uniondale. My Hockey team is my religion, my house of worship, my High School crush, my favorite political cause and my passion rolled into one. Save the Islanders, please. i'm a touch stressed.
Im with ya brother. Ill be out voting and I told my friends and family they better vote. Nassau County is so ***-backwards its incredible. Wang offers to fund his own arena and the county declines. Now the county has to build the arena since they own the land and Wang is only a tenant and they wonder why. If the referendum fails and younger people our age continue to leave they will still wonder why. The residents wonder why everyone from gen X on down is leaving or spend their nights out in the city or dont come back after college.....Well you have nowhere to have trade shows, concerts, sporting events, or even so much as a circus. All thats left is beaches, strip malls and the highest taxes in the country. Yeah, lets hang around for that! The sad part is it costs residents $58 per household for the next 30 years to pass the bill. If they lose the team and lose the 8M in tax revenue, the 3000 jobs the coliseum creates (and the 100M in revenue it generates per year for the employees and surrounding businesses) residents will pay $16 per year for the rest of their lives and have no hockey team, have nowhere to have all the other things I mentioned and will lose or hurt hundreds of surrounding businesses....and anyone who has ever been around the Coliseum knows that all thats there is businesses, Hofstra and Mitchell Field (which will become a minor league baseball stadium with this bill). The sad part is, the new Coliseum has been talked about since 1982! Bill Torrey talked about it with ownership and county officials way back 30 friggin years ago and the county STILL hasnt figured out what to do with 75 acres of the most valuable land anywhere! Unreal. Isles for life brother. Get out and vote.
As a Devils fan I hope it all works out for you guys, this would be an ugly black mark on the NHL and hockey if the Islanders ever left New York. It sucks you have to go through this bull****.
Isles have been bad for a looong time though, the outcome was somewhat expected for me at least. What I do hope, as I think the area will support a good hockey team, is the County Commission and Wang work something out.
Is the arena that bad?? I'm sure the owner can do something to do a few improvements. The Saints just renovated the Superdome by adding seats and making views better by changing the seating, expanding the width of concourses and modernizing things and spent just 336 million, I think that also includes when they had to fix it after Katrina, but not sure.
Nassau Coliseum is so bad that: A) When the Islanders offer players more money they have cited the arena as part of the reason they declined. Granted recent history plays some role as well but to have the arena cited as a reason to decline more money? B) The scoreboard has actually fallen a couple of times in the last ten years including once in the last couple of seasons causing postponement of games or delayed starts. C) The ice surface is voted among the 2-3 worst in the league yearly. D) Its almost 40 years old and its been acknowledged since 1982 that the Islanders need a new arena. I actually like the arena itself. It keeps noise in and during playoff games it gets extremely loud. Ive been in football stadiums with 85000 people that dont sound as loud as Nassau Coliseum with a packed house at 16+. The site-lines are great almost anywhere. Ive been going to that arena since I was a little kid and I've sat close and in the nosebleeds when they were giving away tickets for like $10 to college students. You can sit last row and still see most everything
Funny thing is, in my mind the Isles are a great franchise, I recall them going on that championship run and I guess it always stuck. I hope the owner is not foolish enough to move the team, he should take a lesson from the Atlanta failure and work things out with the local authorities.
Nassau County is the worst dude. The politicians here drag *** and hes been trying to get a new arena done for 10 years. Queens is already recruiting them possibly to partner at Willets Point where CitiField is and maybe doing a version of The Lighthouse Project there and I think brooklyn may end up in play since the Nets have a new arena there coming soon and even though the hockey arena there would be the smallest in the league it would be both new and nice looking. Additionally by the time the Isles lease expires in 2015 the new arena in KC where Wang actually let the Isles play a preseason game a few years ago will be 7 years old by then.
I'm rarely a big fan of a wealthy owner dunning the taxpayers for a new storefront, however imo it makes to much sense for the Isles to stay to watch them wander away. I'm a Sabres/Canes fan and have a love for hockey, it would be a shame to watch them leave, but a part of me thinks "payback for swiping Mike Peca."
First off the payback for Peca was that Milbury was dumb enough to hand 10 years and 87 million to Ya$hin. Second off I agree on taxpayers paying for stadiums except that Wang offered to buy the land and Nassau County wont sell him the land where Nassau Coliseum currently stands because they dont want something as big as The Lighthouse Project. Wang then asked the county to pay for the stadium since they wont sell him the land and the county taxpayers said no. No business owner should have it dictated to them what to build and how to build it by government which is exactly what Nassau County is trying to do to Wang. They're essentially trying to get him to pay for the new coliseum on county owned land. How is that fair either?
