Barclays Owner Ratner Tapped for Nassau Coliseum Revamp

After bringing the Barclays Center to Brooklyn, developer Bruce Ratner will now have a hand in reinventing the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale.

In what Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano said came down to the largest “economic benefit” to the county, Nassau Events Center (NEC), an affiliate of Ratner’s Forest City Enterprises, was chosen over the Madison Square Garden Company Thursday afternoon to redevelop the HUB.

NEC will invest a minimum of $229 million in renovating a 100 percent privately financed Coliseum.

Mangano said that during the initial 34-year lease term, the county will receive 8 percent of gross revenue and 12.75 percent of parking fees with a minimum guaranteed payment of $4 million per year, escalating by 10 percent every five years.

The total revenues will result in a minimum lease term payment of $195 million to the county from NEC, compared with what would have been a $112 million minimum lease term payment from MSG, according to a release.

Mangano said the minimum lease term payment was regarded by the county’s RFP committee “as providing a significant factor for selection of NEC over MSG.”

Along with the minimum lease term payment, NEC has agreed to accept all costs and responsibility for operating, insuring, maintaining and providing utilities for the Coliseum when the current lease expires on Aug. 1, 2015. NEC will also pay rent during the pre-construction approvals period and the actual construction period.

As for the arena’s current inhabitants, the Islanders will play the 2013-14 season in the Coliseum, but Mangano said there has been no talk about whether the team will break the current lease and vacate its home earlier than the expected date of Aug. 1, 2015.

“There’s been no discussions,” Mangano said of the Islanders' early departure. “It’s not contemplated in the contract.”

Ratner said the New York Islanders, who are scheduled to leave their home in Nassau for Brooklyn, will play six games each season at his new Coliseum.

The revived arena would also play host to an unnamed minor league hockey team, Ratner said in May.

Ratner also announced in a May press conference that Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation would help attract musical acts to his vision of the Coliseum.