Islanders Set to Lift Curtain on Belmont Park Arena

It all started for the New York Islanders in 1972 at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum with a rag-tag collection of players culled from other National Hockey League teams—back when they were owned in part by a man who also owned the New York Nets and became infamous for selling future Hall of Famer Julius Erving to a rival NBA franchise.

Some 49 years later, through the course of a glorious era in the early 1980s when they won four straight Stanley Cup championships and more recently during five unsatisfying seasons playing in Brooklyn, the Islanders have a new, sparkling, state-of-the-art home in Nassau County.

After saying goodbye in June to their longtime arena in Uniondale at 1255 Hempstead Turnpike, the Islanders are poised to begin their new residency about seven miles and a litany of traffic lights down the road on the New York City border at 2150 Hempstead Turnpike, where the $1.1 billion UBS Arena awaits them.

Nov. 20 will mark the Islanders' first game at their new arena and, coupled with a benefit concert Nov. 19 at UBS featuring the legendary rock band Chicago, it will raise the curtain on the official transformation of one of Thoroughbred racing's most iconic and beloved facilities into a premier sports and entertainment destination.

"(Long Island) is coming back and that's why the Islanders are coming back and we are investing $1 billion in this state-of-the-art redevelopment at Belmont Park," Islanders majority owner Jon Ledecky said at a Dec. 20, 2017, press conference announcing the move to racetrack property offered by New York State's development corporation, Empire State Development. "To the great community of Elmont, this will be more than an arena. This site will be the home of economic development."

Located directly behind Belmont Park's grandstand near the quarter pole in what used to be a track parking lot, the arena will bring 17,000 fans to the complex Saturday night and similar crowds through a 41-game home regular season schedule that could easily extend into a playoff run which may stretch into the June 11 date for the Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1)—as it did last season.

For Belmont Park, it will resurrect the kind of electricity and activity at the complex that was a staple in the late 1960s and early 1970s but is now seen only once a year these days. While at the same time, it will finally provide the Islanders with a home ideally situated to accommodate their Long Island faithful as well as fans in the tri-state New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area while providing fans with a full array of popular, upscale amenities and sightlines tailored for hockey.

"Belmont Park is the most strategic location to access the largest addressable ticket audience in New York," said Bryan Calka, the Islanders' senior vice president of global partnerships for the last 1 1/2 years. "We know that we're always Long Island's team, but now we can become a Metro New York team at this location and also focus on New Jersey, Connecticut, and Westchester and all of the other areas where we know there are Islanders fans and maybe we weren't fully reaching them before. That's why we wanted this location for this project."

While the Islanders have shared an arena with a basketball team and rock stars in past years, the move to Belmont Park will create a new type of roommate for them in more than 1,000 of the world's best Thoroughbreds and the sport's premier year-round racing circuit.

For both the Islanders and the New York Racing Association that arrangement has created a new operational dynamic with a learning curve that has both sides working in unison to master.

 "The relationship between the arena, NYRA, and the Islanders has been a fantastic relationship since day one," Calka said. "We are very happy with the way it has gone and progressed."

Sharing space with a racetrack may be a new experience for the Islanders, but Calka says there are mutually beneficial advantages.

"The benefit of sharing with the racetrack is that the Belmont Park campus as a whole becomes a point of destination for sports, lifestyle, the arts, and, of course, horse racing is a part of that," Calka said. "Belmont Park is going to become even more established over time as the retail village (in the south parking lot across Hempstead Turnpike with a new, tiered garage) is eventually built after the arena opens and that will continue to focus attention on how the campus and racetrack are a destination."

Calka also said the relationship between NYRA and the Islanders will lend itself to joint marketing ventures in time, but with racing not scheduled to resume at Belmont Park until late April, there is nothing specific in the works at the moment. 

"NYRA has been a great partner to us throughout the entire process and there are plans to continue to work with NYRA on marketing and activation plans," Calka said.

While racetrack fans have watched the arena rise up from the ground over the course of the last two years, for some of the hockey fans it will be a relatively new experience when they walk inside the gates of Belmont Park, where the arena's façade was constructed to mirror the architecture of the racetrack's grandstand. Calka said the initial response to the complex from ticketholders has been positive as the time for the first puck to be dropped nears and a new and exciting era dawns at a 116-year-old racetrack. 

"So far the feedback that we have received from giving tours of the UBS Arena and the park has been nothing but outstanding," Calka said. "We are getting some really positive information and data points from our fans that is telling us that we clearly made the right decision in picking this location."