In its bid to win Nassau County’s request for proposals to develop the Nassau Coliseum property on Long Island, the group led by Barclays Center developer Bruce Ratner believes it has an ace up its sleeve: It has pledged that the New York Islanders, who are leaving Nassau for Brooklyn in 2015, would return to play six regular-season games each season at the new-look coliseum.
Overview of the bidders
A rundown of the groups competing for the development contract for the Nassau Coliseum property on Long Island:
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Rendering from the Forest City Ratner Group.
Photo by: SHOP ARCHITECTS
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■ Nassau Events Center: Coalition led by New York City-based real estate magnate Bruce Ratner, who developed Barclays Center through his Forest City Enterprises. The group includes Ratner’s Forest City Ratner Cos., Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, Legends Hospitality, Guggenheim Partners, Live Nation, architects SHoP and Gensler, and Hunt Construction. Goldman Sachs would provide underwriting and financial advisory services. The group’s plans call for the New York Islanders, the coliseum’s current tenant who will relocate to the Barclays Center in 2015, returning to Long Island to play six homes games per year. The Brooklyn Nets, the Barclays Center’s primary tenant, would play one preseason game per year there.
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Rendering from the MSG group.
Photo by: BBB ARCHITECTS
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■ Madison Square Garden Co.: Led by Hank Ratner, this group owns and operates numerous entertainment properties including the famous arena, the NBA New York Knicks, NHL New York Rangers and WNBA New York Liberty. The partnership for the Nassau project includes developer The Cordish Cos., BBB Architects, RXR Realty and Jones Lang LaSalle. Ratner has said one of MSG’s professional sports franchises could relocate to the renovated coliseum: the Liberty, the AHL Connecticut Whale or the NBA Development League Erie Bayhawks. The Knicks and Rangers would hold practices at the facility, as well.
■ New York Sports and Entertainment: Group led by Long Island developer Bernard Shereck, a former Canadian hockey player from Montreal and owner of The Arena of Long Beach (N.Y.), the former practice arena for the MSG-owned New York Rangers. Jim Johnson, former New York Islanders director of sales and marketing, is the point man. The group is partnered with Global Spectrum.
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Blumenfeld Development Group: Long Island developer Edward Blumenfeld is working with SMG, the coliseum’s current manager, as well as Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan.
— David Broughton
Somewhat surprisingly, Barclays Center and Brooklyn Nets CEO Brett Yormark said that if Ratner were to win the development contract, having those six Islanders games at the venue would not change the group’s plans to scale down the coliseum. The Islanders would play in his group’s proposed 13,000-seat, remodeled venue.
In 2015, when the Islanders make their scheduled move to Brooklyn, Barclays Center will gain the label of the NHL’s smallest arena, with capacity of 15,000 for hockey. The Islanders averaged 13,307 fans over 24 home dates during the lockout-abbreviated 2013 regular season. That figure ranked 29th in the league, behind only the Phoenix Coyotes.
“Thirteen thousand works,” said Yormark, who added that he expects the Islanders, with their improvements on the ice, to be a hotter ticket in two years. “Scarcity is a good thing.”
The Barclays Center group, Forest City Ratner, has proposed scaling down the 16,200-seat coliseum to 13,000 seats for games and concerts and 4,000 for family shows. It has three competitors in the RFP: the Madison Square Garden Co. and Long Island developers Edward Blumenfeld (who is working with SMG, the coliseum’s current manager) and Bernard Shereck.
But it is the Barclays Center group that has the Islanders, who completed a 25-year lease agreement in October to play in the Brooklyn arena.
Ratner and Yormark have a working relationship with Islanders owner Charles Wang, who gave his blessing to having his team potentially play six games each season in Nassau starting in 2015-16.
In polling conducted by marketing strategy agency CSE last month for Yormark’s staff to gauge the interest of Long Island fans in the Islanders’ move to Brooklyn, a few participants suggested, “Don’t leave.”
“It’s their team,” Yormark said of the Islanders’ deep fan base on Long Island. “It’s important for the Long Island fan base to stay connected to the Islanders. We also feel that it’s a big differentiator for our group in this bid.”
Yormark said one possible concept for the six Islanders games in Nassau would be to label some of them “heritage nights” and feature historic rivals such as the New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers as opponents.
“There’s so much you can do with those games,” Yormark said. “We could also offer a 12-game ticket plan for Long Islanders, with six games at the coliseum and six games in Brooklyn.”
Forest City Ratner’s proposed $229 million project would also feature a 2,000-seat concert venue, a 2,500-seat amphitheater, restaurants, a movie theater and retail space.
Yormark said that he had letters of commitment for more than 100 events and an agreement with an AHL franchise to move to the coliseum but would not divulge details. Islanders owner Wang also owns the Bridgeport (Conn.) Sound Tigers, the Islanders’ AHL affiliate.
Nassau County officials declined to comment. All four bidders are awaiting the next step in the RFP process. There is no timetable for a decision.
