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NYC STADIUMS TO SPUR RETAIL, CONFERENCE TOLD

BY DEBRA HAZEL

NEW YORK — A flurry of new sports venues in and around New York City in coming years will boost the city’s convention profile, increase its chances of landing the 2012 Summer Olympics and generate considerable retail space, said speakers addressing ICSC’s New York Conference & Deal Making.

Plans call for new stadiums for the New York Jets football team in Manhattan and the New York Mets baseball team in Queens, as well as an arena for the New Jersey Nets basketball team in Brooklyn, all within the next five years. The venues would be the first professional sports facilities built in New York City since Shea Stadium opened in 1964.

The Jets stadium will be part of the $1.4 billion New York Sports and Convention Center, which will in turn incorporate an expanded Javits Center. Retail space would be located along all four sides of the site.

“This is not just a stadium,” Michael Kalt, a senior policy director in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, told the December conference. “This is part of a convention corridor” extending from the Javits Center southward. Not only does New York City badly need more sports facilities, it is crying out for more convention space, he said, noting that the city ranks 16th in the United States in terms of convention capacity.

In Brooklyn, Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards will include the $650 million Nets basketball arena and 7 million square feet of surrounding development, including 400,000 square feet of retail, above a major transit hub. Shea Stadium would give way to a new stadium built on an adjacent lot that was the site of the 1964 World’s Fair. Plans are also afoot for a 1 million-square-foot mall to be built near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

Not all the sports development is taking place in New York, though. Across the Hudson River, in East Rutherford, N.J., work has begun on The Mills Corp.’s Meadowlands Xanadu after 10 years of planning and deliberations by public agencies. Located near the Meadlowlands Sports Complex, the $1.5 billion Meadowlands Xanadu will include almost 5 million square feet of retail and entertainment as well as offices and hotels. Mills’ partner on the project is Cranford, N.J.-based Mack-Cali Realty Corp.

Many of the proposed venues would be utilized as Olympic sites should New York City be awarded the games when the International Olympic Committee makes its pick next year, officials say.

David Tewksbury, co-founder and executive vice president of Chelsea Piers Management, offered an example of how a sports venue can boost other development in the surrounding area, including retail. A redevelopment of a former passenger ship terminal on Manhattan’s West Side, the 1.7 million-square-foot Chelsea Piers (which includes an ice rink, a driving range, a gymnastics studio, a fitness club and a spa), has revitalized that neighborhood since it opened in 1994. “There was one art gallery in the neighborhood when we opened,” Tewksbury said. “Now there are more than 230.”

More than 6,000 people registered for this year’s meeting, making it the second-largest gathering of retail real estate professionals in the world, after ICSC’s Spring Convention.

Also at the conference, the second annual Barry M. Davis Next Generation Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Warren Shein, director of leasing and marketing at Nassimi Realty Corp., New York City. The scholarship pays for studies at the John T. Riordan School for Professional Development. It honors Barry M. Davis, a founder of New York City-based investment firm Sun Management Corp. Davis died in February 2003.