Newsday: Nassau County negotiating over Coliseum with not just Prokhorov's Onexim, but also EB-5 investors

Nassau: Coliseum operators owe $2M in unpaid rent, utilities, Newsday reported yesterday, noting that the County, which owns the Coliseum and leases it to Mikhail Prokhorov’s company, Onexim Sports & Entertainment, wants Prokhorov to pay up.

Notes Newsday:

The letter, sent by the county's outside attorney Tuesday, indicates the notice of default is intended as a mechanism to bring Prokhorov’s company, Onexim Sports & Entertainment, to the negotiating table to discuss the future of the county-owned Coliseum.

A spokesman for Onexim said, "We are engaged in a productive conversation with all the stakeholders." There could be a new operator, which would have to rehire some or all of the 1,419 workers--most of them part-time, presumably--who were laid off on June 30.

Note that the County's negotiations are not only with Onexim but also Nassau Coliseum Funding 100, LLC, which is the entity formed to pool a $90 million loan [update: $100 million] from 180 Chinese investors under the EB-5 immigrant investor program. (Newsday erroneously cites "a Chinese investor.")

That entity was formed by the U.S. Immigration Fund, the nation's leading middleman company for EB-5 investors. Here's my previous coverage of the 2015 concern in the Nassau Legislature over that deal, and my mention last month that EB-5 money was involved.

According to Newsday, the county’s letter said, "We have been, and remain, particularly concerned about the status of NEC’s leasehold mortgage loan," which involves those EB-5 investors.