Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Nassau Coliseum operator establishes fund to assist 700 hourly workers , Newsday reported 3/19/20: The operator of NYCB Live’s Nassau Coliseum said Thursday it has established a fund “to assist with offsetting some of the lost wages” of its hourly workers. The Islanders contributed an unspecified amount to the fund, according to Onexim Sports and Entertainment, the Coliseum's operator. Onexim's decision to create a fund for hourly workers to the roughly 700 affected workers “recognizes the hardships faced by our hourly employees during this shutdown,” the company said in a statement. Onexim, owned by Mikhail Prokhorov, formerly operated the Barclays Center. What's unclear from this report--and I haven't found any clarification--is how much Onexim, with the New York Islanders (the main tenant), is contributing. Does it match that of other venues, such as the Barclays Center, which has pledged "the paychecks they would have earned if Brooklyn Nets regular s...

There's an interesting anecdote on the Brooklyn Nets fan podcast, The Glue Guys, in the Irina Pavlova Exit Interview , interviewing the recently departed (after seven years)   president of ONEXIM Sports and Entertainment, the holding company (owned by Mikhail Prokhorov) for the Nets, Barclays Center, and other properties. The segment starts at about 8:26. One host asks if, in retrospect, there's anything that could have changed about the move of the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn., "I am satisfied how it's worked out, I mean, obviously, leaving basketball aside," Pavlova said. "There are a few things that we would have changed about the arena if we could. But at the point we got involved, it was already a done deal. So we couldn't go back and redo the drawings." Remember, Forest City Ratner (led by Bruce Ratner) and parent Forest City Enterprises were the majority owners of the arena, and had already decided (in 2008) to swap Frank Gehry...

Today, at an 11 am meeting (which will be webcast ), the "dummy not-for-profit" Brooklyn Arena Local Development Corporation (BALDC) is expected to approve a refinancing of a "all or substantially all" of the remaining portion of the $511 million tax-exempt bonds used to pay off construction of the Barclays Center. (The overall total of payments, given interest, is far more than $511 million.) Details on the amount and interest rate are unavailable in the board materials (also below), but surely the decision, which aims to take advantage of today's local interest rates (versus the original 2009 bonds), will save arena operator Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Sports & Entertainment tens of millions of dollars. Prokhorov, who owned 45% of the arena operating company, bought the majority from Forest City Ratner/Forest City Enterprises around the end of last year. The fig leaf of state ownership of the arena--which is then leased for a song to the arena...

See my update on arena finances and valuation. Upon formal announcement of the deal to sell Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Sports & Entertainment the 20% of the Brooklyn Nets and 55% of the Barclays Center (operating company) controlled by Forest City Enterprises, the arena deal appeared to be a loss [see below for questions about that] and a bond rating agency revealed that the past year's  debt service coverage ratio --the net revenue available to pay back the construction bonds--was dangerously low. Prokhorov also vaguely pledged community continuity in the wake of local concerns, stating that existing Forest City Ratner staff would remain as interfaces with the public.  That makes strategic sense, given the difficulty in finding new people, but also means that the Forest City staffers will be conduits, with no clear power to implement policy changes. The new value According to the Forest City press release, "The transaction values the team at approx...