So let’s roll with a hypothetical to start this off.
Let’s say you own the second floor condo in a building. The first floor is owned and operated by the homeowners’ association in the complex. You spend absolute dumpsters full of your own cash renovating the top floor over three years. You have a plan, you create jobs and you start to execute the plan. In the first year you replace the roof, run super-fast CAT 6 cable through the walls, and replace the kitchen in its entirety. In the second year you replace every single fixture and piece of furniture in your condo. You use only top of the line materials, and again, you create jobs by having people work at a premium to install everything in a timely manner so you don’t disrupt the people below you. In the third year you replace every single piece of lighting and electronics. Your end result is a state of the art home along with all the trappings and trimmings. You increase the value of your space and the space around your part of the building.
Then, the homeowners’ association tells you that you have 10 more years in the space, at which time you must move. The reason? The homeowners’ association wants to renovate the bottom floor, and needs you gone to do it. My guess is that you would tell the HOA guys to bugger off and leave you and your pride-inducing luxury condo alone.
Essentially that is what is going on in midtown Manhattan.
Madison Square Garden, home to the New York Rangers, the Knicks, and countless concerts, college basketball games, among other events, has been told to leave within the next 10 years. You see the Garden, the self-proclaimed world’s most famous arena, sits atop the busiest transportation hub in North America: Penn Station.
Anyone who has been inside Penn Station for five minutes knows that the station is a dingy, dirty, outdated mess. Honestly, if there is any building in NYC that needs an enema, it is DEFINITELY Penn Station. The restaurants are outdated and not well traveled, the newsstands look old, and even the Duane Reade at the 7th Avenue entrance is sad.
Above this pit of commuting despair is a raucous state of the art cash cow owned by James Dolan, and his right-to-print-his-own-money digital communication conglomerate Cablevision, which includes the television network that broadcasts the teams he owns and operates. Dolan has put millions into renovating the Garden over the last three years and as the Garden reopens its doors to another NHL season, will go back to replacing the dumpsters of money (As reported by the New York Times, it was a $968 million renovation) that he has invested in the space.
By the way, a thriving Madison Square Garden means more revenue for Manhattan, a fact that the New York City Council has conveniently overlooked when they only renewed MSG’s lease for 10 years. Basically, they have laid down the ultimatum. Dolan has 10 years to find a new space to house the Knicks, Rangers and all those money making events, or he will find himself and his money essentially homeless.
Are you kidding? I mean, am I really typing this? I find it so mind-numbingly STUPID to think that they can’t arrange to do the Penn Station renovation without having to evict a major source of extra revenue that the city of New York can ill afford to lose in light of that massive recession that is only now beginning to lift. I thought Plaxico Burress was the only guy who was prone to shooting himself in the foot, despite having every advantage handed to him.
Look, everyone knows that there are still problems in the Garden. For example, there are still brutal obstructed view seats which Dolan must still sell. The funny thing? The Garden still sells out on most nights despite all the issues. The history of the Rangers and Knicks and the draw of a state of the art arena is still a rock solid list of very marketable assets. If I were James Dolan and had heard that announcement on Wednesday, I would have marched down to City Hall in Downtown NYC, and stabbed a b***h.
But, admittedly, I have anger issues. Dolan, in his cool, calm manner simply released a simple statement, through a representative:
“Madison Square Garden has operated at its current site for generations, and has been proud to bring New Yorkers some of the greatest and most iconic moments in sports and entertainment. We now look forward to the reopening of the arena in the fall of 2013.”
So do we, Mr. Dolan, so do we.
And that, my friends, is the last effin’ word.
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