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| Construction began in September on the New York Islanders’ new Belmont Park Arena, part of a $1.26 billion project that will also include a 250-room hotel and 350,000 square feet of retail. The NHL team currently splits its home games between the Nassau Coliseum and the Barclays Center and is expected to move into the new arena for the 2021-2022 season. New York Arena Partners—a partnership among the owners of the Islanders, Sterling Equities and Oak View Group—is financing the project, which will be highly leveraged, with one source putting the debt at roughly $800 million. But three sources have told me that Sterling Equities has yet to put in any money for its share of project. Sterling Equities is a real estate company owned mainly by the Wilpon and Katz families. Fred Wilpon is the chairman and CEO of the Mets, and Saul Katz is the president of the MLB team. It is unusual for construction for a project to begin without all the financing in place, and it is unclear why that is the case in this particular instance. Nor is it clear where the money would come from to replace Sterling Equities, if necessary. |
Maybe the Islanders didn't read the fine print that they would be "deferred" payments.