POSTINGS

Spoiled Sports
The Lighthouse Project: As far back as 2004, the owners of the New York Islanders sought to renovate the much maligned Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the NHLs oldest arena aside from Madison Square Garden. In 2011, Nassau County voters rejected a request by team owner Charles Wang and a development group for public financing of the rehab. As a result, the Islanders organization announced last fall plans to move the team to the Barclays Center in 2015. Forest City Ratner has proposed renovating the Coliseum and having the Islanders play six games a season at their original home.

ast week, the International Speedway Corporation sold a Staten Island plot of nearly 700 acres for $80 million, bringing a close to a saga in which the organization had promised to bring an 82,000seat NASCAR raceway to the metropolitan New York area. The sale of the land for the proposed project, scuttled in 2006 after dissent by local residents, brings to mind a handful of other ambitious plans for other New York sports venues that were never realized. Below, we take a look at some of the most prominent examples.

Brooklyn Americans: Before the New York Rangers, there was the New York Americans, the citys first professional hockey team. The Amerks, as they were popularly known, got their start in 1925, a year before the Rangers. But once the Broadway Blueshirts came to town, the Americans could never quite keep up with the popularity of their neighbors at Madison Square Garden. In the early 1940s, management changed the teams name to the Brooklyn Americans, intent on moving the club across the East River, only to find the lack of infrastructure uninviting. The Americans played at the Garden and practiced in the Brooklyn Ice Palace at Atlantic Avenue and Bedford Avenue during the 1941-42 season before ceasing operations during World War II. In 1946 the franchise folded. Brooklyn Dodgers Atlantic Yards Project: In the early 1950s, Walter OMalley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, planned a new 52,000seat stadium at Atlantic Yards, which would have been the worlds first domed sports venue. But the proposed stadium, designed by Buckminster Fuller and projected to cost $6 million, never got built. Instead of keeping the Dodgers in New York, Mr. OMalley moved his team to Los Angeles. Since last fall the Atlantic Yards site has housed the Barclays Center, now home to the Brooklyn Nets.

West Side Stadium: Proposed as the centerpiece to New Yorks 2012 Summer Olympics bid, the West Side Stadium would have risen over the West Side rail yards. The proposed 85,000-seat stadium would include a retractable roof and later be reduced to 75,000 seats to become home to the New York Jets. London secured the 2012 Games bid, and state representatives in Albany denied the Manhattan stadium funding, leaving the Jets no choice but to stay in East Rutherford, N.J. and enter a partnership with the New York Giants to build MetLife Stadium. Madison Square Garden: Before the debate over MSGs special permit began this year, the owners of what they call the Worlds Most Famous Arena had flirted with the idea of relocating the stadium to the western annex of the James A. Farley Post Office. The deal collapsed once the Gardens owners elected to renovate the current building; the arenas fate remains uncertain.

illustrations by brian taylor

18 | AUGUST 13, 2013 | THE COMMERCIAL OBSERVER