Globe and Mail on Islanders New Arena Plans
April 18th, 2007 by murph
The Toronto Globe and Mail has an article up about the Islanders new arena plans. Apparently, the Long Island Lighthouse part of the plan has been scrapped. No big surprise there, Wang’s original plan was crazy ambitious for a town/county known for dragging their feet with bureaucracy. The article also says the Islanders don’t expect the arena to be done until 2012 at the earliest. That’s 5 more years at the ol’ barn…so let’s make it count…STARTING TONIGHT! Beat the Sabres! Skate hard for 60 minutes and hit the #%!& net when you shoot tonight.
While opinions vary about whether he can pull it off, Islanders owner Charles Wang has stickhandled his plan for a renovation of the Nassau Coliseum and the surrounding property into a project that includes a couple of office buildings and residences.
This is different from the original $1.6-billion (U.S.) project Wang started out with. He was forced to drop what was called The Lighthouse, an office tower that would have included a hotel and condos, from the project but will continue with the arena renovations and office and housing developments.
However, it is still not clear just what will be in the final development of the arena and the 77 acres of property around it because the last hurdle is approval from the town of Hempstead. Islander officials said this could take another 18 months and that renovation of the arena, the second-oldest in the National Hockey League, will probably not start until 2009.
The plans for the arena are to drop the ice surface by five feet and add a ring of luxury boxes and replace all of the seats, bringing the capacity to 18,000 from its present 16,234. The work will be done over the course of three off-seasons, which means the earliest it will be completed is the fall of 2012.
