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Who is the enemy?
The Lighthouse Project has been moving along steadily as the parties involved are solidifying their documentation for this project to succeed. The Organization, as I like to call Charles Wang's project and the governments of the Town of Hempstead and Nassau County have proved so far that they are willing to listen with enthusiasm to the proposals as the first public hearings get underway. A concern has arisen from a fan perspective that there will inevitably be opposition in the future. The question of who is it going to be, where will it arise from and when will it start?
We know there is going to be the group of people we like to call the Not-In-My-BackYarders a.k.a. NIMBYs . These are the people who will get up to gripe about issues because all they want to do is gripe. There will be a portion of the NIMBY camp that will have justifiable concerns as to this project showing up on their door step. The NIMBY camp that we have to watch for is as we jokingly refer to as the "Jones Beach Turtle Faction." These will be the NIMBY environmentalist who will not want the project because they feel it will effect the mating ritual of the spotted turtle at Jones Beach all the way from Uniondale. These people can be dealt with when you pull out facts and studies. The people that the project ends up in their backyards, I hope that LILHPEDA can help address any issues that may come about and assist to mitigate the negative effects of the project on these families lifestyles.
The town and county governments are always on the front of peoples minds in regards to undertakings of this magnitude. These agencies are easy targets. Keeping a positive attitude through the approval process will hopefully lessen any feelings that may generate from decisions being made behind the podiums. Where most think that these two government agencies will be the stumbling block to keep this all from moving onward there is yet another final external force that could reach up and squelch this whole project.
Time is the enemy that we have not begun to discuss. You only need to look at new stadium projects around the country to realize that what I refer to as "Bar Napkin to Super Bowl" in the case of the new stadium in Arizona the process should take 3-4 years. "Bar Napkin" being the idea being hatched in a local watering hole after work one day by a few passionate people who begin making some sketches on the back of a bar napkin. "To Super Bowl" means they got it done. Mission accomplished! It took the good folks out in Arizona between 3-4 years to go from the concept to actually playing games.
Looking at the current lease agreement with the County, SMG, and the NY Islanders ending in the year 2015 you can expect decisions to be made based strictly on time. Consider a worse case scenario for an Islander Fan, the Islanders moving to Portland or Houston. This will mean that they will start the 2015 season abroad. In order for the Portland Islanders to start their 2015 season this isn't something that will occur overnight. Using the Arizona model of 3-4 years in order to plan, develop and build the actual stadium we can look at about 2011 that the Islanders announcing that they will move.
Missing from the puzzle is the allowance for time for the courting process. The Arizona Stadium was a new arena for a team already in place which is not the case in a situation if the Islanders move to a new locale and have to have a new arena constructed. The Islanders will have to announce sometime before then that they will be looking for suitors to accept the team in the 2015 NHL season. Portland, Houston or Hamilton, as examples, will put together their answers to the request for proposals from the Islanders. This will not be an overnight process either and I predict it could take about 18-24 months for cities to get their stadium plans and financial information together so they may present their offers to our team. These 18-24 months will take us to the latter parts of 2009.
Continuing to backward plan, the Islanders will need a few months to announce their decision to look at other venues. This would bring us roughly to Summer 2009 or another way to say "July 2009".
Last night at the Chalk Talk session at Nassau Coliseum, Charles Wang anticipated a ground breaking in July of 2009. Do you see a correlation in those two dates? Last night Charles stealthily gave us his time from and confirmed it by saying that date. Now this date is all speculative and the armchair quarterbacks in us all can only lead our team so far but this is something that needs to have serious consideration.
It is estimated that 500,000 people attend Islander and Dragon games and year, another 500,000 for concerts and other performances and yet another 500,000 for conventions and trade shows come through the coliseum every year means there is an annual coliseum attendance of 1.5 million people. Nassau County has 1.2 million. From a statistic stand point, every county resident will theoretically attend a function at the coliseum once during a given year. With the track record of SMG, if the Islanders chose to move you know what shape the arena will end up very quickly. People will refuse to go to the arena. Functions, concerts and conventions will even more vehemently refuse to come to the Crowned Jewel which translates into lost revenue for the county, town and citizens.
Who is the enemy? Even if things get moving and there is no opposition from the town or county, time is still the enemy that will darken the lighthouse project if we do not get shovels into the ground come next summer.