by Ken Walker
Newark Live: Nets say showroom is proof of move
May 16, 2008
“Nets say showroom is proof of move”:http://www.nj.com/newark/index.ssf/2008/05/newarks_next_school_chief.html
The Nets CEO delivers a total buzzkill to the possibility of bringing the team to the Prudential Center.
The Nets Thursday showed off a full-size replica of the luxury suites they expect to feature in their $950 million Brooklyn arena, in yet another push to demonstrate they are serious about leaving New Jersey in 2010.
The opening of the Barclays Center’s midtown Manhattan showroom kicks off the Nets’ public effort to market 130 suites with an average price tag of $300,000, as well as 3,200 premium seats, said Brett Yormark, the team’s chief executive.
“We would just love to have the Nets here in Newark,” said Joseph DiVincenzo, the Essex County executive who is involved in the effort. “I strongly believe that it would be good for them and for us economically.”
Yormark dismissed that as a possibility, saying sharing the Prudential Center with the Devils “is of no interest to us.”
NYC has so much money to throw around that they might indeed provide so much subsidy to the ‘Barclays Center’ that these sports mega-millionaires will indeed be able to carry off the forced move of the Nets. After all, NY is, right now, simultaneously building two new ballparks, a new Yankee Stadium and “Citi Field” for the Mets. How much is this all going to cost the taxpayers of NY? I’m sure the City of NY doesn’t want New Yorkers to know. And of course Europeans have a euro so high as against the dollar at the moment that a $300,000 luxury suite is less than 200,000 euros, ‘cheap’. With all the outside money NY brings in, a $950M arena may not seem prohibitive, and NY doesn’t give a damn about the little guy whose tax breaks subsidize the super-rich. So maybe RATner will get away with building an arena the inside of which ordinary people will never see. This is part and parcel of the Republican turnover of everything to the rich, paid for by the poor and middle class. Makes you nostalgic for the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror”, doesn’t it?