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April 14, 2009
New York Stories
With two facilities opening this week and more on the way, can sports’ biggest marketplace support them all?
Sports Business Journal
by Bill King
Yankees COO Lonn Trost is having trouble sleeping these days.
Trost suspects that this would have been the case even if the economic weather hadn’t turned as it did, breeding the “perfect storm,” as he often calls it. It was during an economic boom that the Yankees planned, built and priced the most expensive stadium to date: a vast, $1.5 billion stretch of polished stone and steel.
They will open the park on Thursday, amid the worst financial unraveling since the Great Depression, a time of fiscal and psychic realignment that has some companies rethinking the way they entertain clients.
This is not something anyone would have predicted or planned for.
...“Is the activity as high-paced as you’d want opening a new facility? Absolutely not,” said Jeff Wilpon, Mets chief operating officer and son of principal owner Fred Wilpon. “But it’s still pacing ahead of last year, and I think in the end we’ll pick up because of word of mouth.
“Considering that the economy hasn’t gotten any better, that’s not so bad. We’ll be fine.”
This is not simply the story of two big league ballparks built in one environment and opening in another, though that would bear watching, even by itself. No, this is about an entire sporting city under construction, a place where the hard hat is running neck-and-neck with the ball cap, as no fewer than half a dozen teams try to make good on billions of dollars in facility upgrades at a time when purse strings are pulled tight.
And where the handful who haven’t yet put shovels in the ground hope against hope that they still can.
Like the would-be developer of Atlantic Yards?
And then there is Nets owner Bruce Ratner, still angling to build a $950 million arena as part of a $3.5 billion project in Brooklyn, and Islanders owner Charles Wang, who wants to pull off a similar play on a smaller scale with his NHL team on Long Island.
NoLandGrab: Officially, it's a $4 billion project.
From the time that it became clear that this glut of inventory would hit the market in a short span, the teams took the position that New York, as the capital of American business, could absorb it. Today, each still speaks confidently about his own endeavors. But privately, each wonders about the larger picture.
We’ll be fine, but those guys?
One man’s “we” is another man’s “those guys.”
NLG: Obviously, there's no regional entity overseeing and coordinating the need for arenas and stadiums, but there should be. And with the Yankees still advertising the availability of ticket packages just two days short of opening their new ballpark, the market for more sports facilities doesn't seem too rosy.
Posted by eric at April 14, 2009 11:14 AM