Yes, Islanders bidding for new arena at Belmont. Wait and see.

Yes, the New York Islanders, as expected, have submitted a plan to build a hockey/entertainment arena at the Belmont Park site, competing with a plan from New York City FC to build a soccer stadium, and an unspecified (retail?) plan from Blumenfeld Development Group, Newsday reported yesterday.

The Islanders' plan has juice:

The Islanders’ group is labeled New York Arena Partners, LLC. It includes Sterling Project Development, which is controlled by the Mets’ Wilpon family and Oak View Group, an arena development company backed by Madison Square Garden.
...A potential Islanders arena that would have ties to Madison Square Garden would present competition for the Barclays Center and the renovated Nassau Coliseum — two nearby arenas run by Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment.

No details have been released about the bid or the financial assumptions behind a new arena.

Does that mean that the Islanders will be gone at the end of their third or fourth season, ending their once-proclaimed ironclad 25-year lease at the Barclays Center? Surely not. Even if they do get a new arena built, they need to play somewhere.

Are subsidies justified?

I've predicted all along, with no inside information, that the most likely result is that the Islanders will stay in Brooklyn, with new lease terms. 

My rationale simply is that the cost of building a new arena is significant, and there's no justification for government direct and indirect subsidies for that arena, especially when it will compete with--and surely cannibalize from--a government-supported arena in Brooklyn and a government-owned arena in Nassau County.

After all, the entity evaluating the bids is Empire State Development, which, through an alter ego, the Brooklyn Arena Local Development Company, officially owns the Barclays Center.

That said, if New York Arena Partners wants to pay for the whole thing itself, including "infrastructure improvements" (unlikely), and has calculated that it can corral enough of the concert/event market to make a profit and pay back construction costs, well, that would be interesting. 

Are there really enough corporations to pay for suites? To pay for sponsorships? How high would ticket prices have to go?

So I'm not saying the Islanders' group isn't serious. But they also may be playing a very elaborate game of chess, with one result ending in negotiations with the Barclays operator.

Caution suggested

At Lighthouse Hockey, Dan Saraceni observed:

This is just the first step in what is the team’s latest quest for a new, modern, money-generating home. Some of us have been down this road before. Many, many times before. So while this is a significant moment, it’s important to remember that nothing is done until it’s done.

Meanwhile, Newsday reported that lame-duck, indicted Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano wants the Belmont site to host Amazon's second corporate headquarters, perhaps as a way to nudge the Islanders back to the revamped, but shrunken, Coliseum.