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July 30, 2012
With arena General Manager gone, more pressure on getting arena systems to work; Forest City exec once warned that "it is essential that the arena be completed by early July 2012" for testing
Atlantic Yards Report
Trouble in paradise the Fourth (and Eighth) Circles of Hell?
It's a bit of a mystery, and it has to be a troubling for Barclays Center operators. Sports Business Journal reports today on the departure of the arena General Manager and (via NetsDaily's summary):
[John] Sparks decided to "go in a different direction" and left New York a month ago, [arena CEO] Brett Yormark told SBJ. The change is not expected to affect the arena construction timetable.
Well, it won't affect the construction timetable, as the arena's supposed to reach a substantial completion date of 9/5/12, itself nudged back from 8/12/12, after three other adjustments. But they have little more than three weeks after that to get the building ready for the first Jay-Z concert.
Sparks' departure won't make it easier to make the systems work in a complicated building that, Forest City Ratner's top Atlantic Yards executive once said, had "to be completed by early July 2012" to ensure "three to four months" for testing.
In other words, it was already a very tight timetable. Now, they've lost Sparks, who Yormark once said "brings to us a wealth of best practices." So the margin for error diminishes.
It was already a good bet that, upon the official opening Sept. 28, they'd still be working out the kinks to make the building work for both guests or neighbors. Now the likelihood of kinks is greater. After all, the Barclays Center hasn't even announced the hiring of a promised community relations official.
Posted by eric at July 30, 2012 12:23 PM