James Dolan spent over $8 million lobbying to stop the Jets from building the West Side stadium for a host of reasons, none more important than the fact that the new stadium would pose a threat to Madison Square Garden as Manhattan's largest concert and event venue. There's nothing Dolan and his money can do to stop new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, but what about the Nets move into Brooklyn?
Dolan's apparent disinterest in what's happening in Brooklyn -- which broke ground last month and is expected to be completed for the 2009-10 season -- suggests the Garden chairman has no confidence in the project and no fear with the result of it. There are still many skeptics who don't believe the arena will ever get completed because it has been met with great resistance from the residents of the area -- mostly Knicks fans, no doubt -- who will be disturbed by the construction. With the support of Mayor Bloomberg, Nets owner Bruce Ratner is going forward anyway.
Barclays Arena, as it will be named, will be a superior venue to the antiquated Garden, which turns 40 next year. The team that will play in it, the Nets, already have been the superior NBA team in the area for almost a decade. So why not the same amount of contention with Ratner on his plan to move into one of the five boroughs -- traditionally Knick Country -- and infringe on not only the Knicks fan base but the Garden's business?
Comments (5)
I'm a Nets season ticket holder who lives in Brooklyn. You are not giving your chairman enough credit. Mr Dolan has stated that he favors the project because Forest-City Ratner is paying the bill and he has no objection to free enterprise
Area residents, myself included, aren't opposed because of the contruction. We're opposed because this project is dropping a huge commercial complex in the middle of our neighborhood. I love free enterprise, but the bottom line is that at the end of the day, the project will be bad for the local business and neighborhood commerce. Brooad visitor's locker room? Willklyn does not need ten square blocks of what looks like giant 24-hour banks.
The idea that there is a conspiracy of Knicks fans who are opposed to the stadium based on team allegiance is absurd. Knicks fans have David Lee's ankle to worry about. I don't despise this stadium because I'm a Knicks fan, but because it's going to ruin where I live.
As for Barclays being superior to The Garden, what do you know? It will be newer, but will it have any of The Garden's rich history? Will opposing players get a special buzz from playing there, despite the famously bad visitor's locker room? Will rookies get the same shivers stepping onto the court? Will there be the same ushers as there have been for 35 years? I guess you don't understand enough to care about these things.
And anyway, it hasn't been built yet, so how can you say whether it will be better or not?
Oops. What I was trying to say in that first paragrpah was that Brooklyn doesn't need ten square blocks of what looks like giant 24-hour banks. Don't know how that got jumbled up.
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