Sports in New York City - Current Issues and New Stadiums

Current Issues and New Stadiums

The 2000s have seen almost a complete revamping of the area's major sporting venues. This began in 2007, when the Devils moved to Newark, NJ and opened the Prudential Center. In 2009, both the Mets and Yankees opened new baseball stadiums adjacent to their old homes, with the Mets replacing Shea Stadium with Citi Field and the Yankees building a new Yankee Stadium. In 2010, the Jets and Giants moved to a new shared facility called New Meadowlands Stadium (now MetLife Stadium) and the Red Bulls opened their own soccer-specific stadium in Harrison, NJ called Red Bull Arena (the three had previously shared Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ). In 2012, the Nets moved from New Jersey to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and became the Brooklyn Nets. The Islanders will follow the Nets into Brooklyn in 2015. Other sports-related renovations and construction work is as follows:

New York Rangers and New York Knicks: Madison Square Garden is in the process of a massive renovation. The $850 million project began in 2010 and will be complete in time for the 2013-14 NHL and NBA seasons. The transformation will include a rebuilding of the seating bowl and concourses, new luxury suites, new LED scoreboard and ribbon boards, and two new spectator bridges that will span 65 feet (20 m) above the arena on each side of the playing surface.

Major League Soccer is currently working with various local groups in order to allow for an expansion team to begin play sometime between 2013-15 to New York City. It would be the 20th team in the league and second MLS team in the New York City area, the original being the New York Red Bulls. The league is spearheading the planning for a new soccer-specific stadium within city limits, and plans to finance and construct the venue before awarding the expansion team to an ownership group, which may or may not be affiliated with a relaunching of the New York Cosmos. After narrowing the locations down to six, amongst them being Pier 40 in Manhattan, Greenpoint in Brooklyn and the area near Citi Field in Queens, the league has zeroed in on the dilapidated Fountain of Industry site in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens as of June 2012. The site was previously discussed as a possible location for the New York Jets to build a stadium after their West Side Stadium project fell through, but the Jets opted to remain in New Jersey instead.