Meadowlands Sports Complex

The Meadowlands Sports Complex is a sports and entertainment facility owned and operated by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA). It is located in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It consists of three venues: Giants Stadium, the Meadowlands Racetrack, and the Continental Airlines Arena.

History

In the mid-1960s, civic leaders in New Jersey began calling for a sports complex in the New Jersey Meadowlands that would be able to lure a National Football League team from New York. The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority Law was passed by the state legislature in 1971 and signed by then-Gov. William T. Cahill. The first chairman of the NJSEA was David A. "Sonny" Werblin, former president of the NFL's New York Jets. By year's end, Werblin had secured a deal for the New York Giants, who were then playing in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, to move to the Meadowlands. Ground was broken on Giants Stadium and the Meadowlands Racetrack on November 19, 1972.

To accommodate the new facility, access roads were improved. The New Jersey Turnpike, which had been suffering the burden of increased traffic volumes near its northern terminus in Ridgefield Park, built a new alignment, the "western spur", with an exit, interchange 16W, leading directly to the sports complex as well as to New Jersey State Highway 3. Routes 3 and 20 (now 120) also received improvements.

On September 1, 1976, the Meadowlands Racetrack became the first complex venue to open, featuring harness racing. The track drew a capacity crowd of 42,133 for its initial date. Giants Stadium opened on October 10 of that year, as 76,042 fans watched the New York Giants lose to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-14.

By 1977, plans were in the works to expand the complex. A new arena was to be built on the opposite side of Route 20 from the stadium and racetrack, connected by vehicle ramps and a pedestrian bridge. Brendan Byrne Arena, named for the sitting governor, opened July 2, 1981, with the first of six sold-out shows by the rock musician Bruce Springsteen. The arena was renamed for its corporate sponsor, Continental Airlines, in early 1996.

In addition to the three venues, the complex also hosts events in the Giants Stadium parking lot. State Fair Meadowlands (formerly called the Meadowlands Fair, and not affiliated with the New Jersey State Fair held annually in Sussex County) began in 1986 and has been operated by State Fair of Belleville since 2003. The parking lot is also the home of a twice-weekly flea market, which is canceled when the parking spaces are needed for stadium events.

Future

Several times, the prospect of bringing baseball to the Meadowlands Sports Complex has been discussed. However, a bond issue to build a baseball stadium was defeated by the voters in the 1990s.

In 2003, under the leadership of NJSEA chairman George Zoffinger, the authority agreed to a redevelopment of the Arena site. The proposal, named Xanadu, would expand the site into a shopping, office, and entertainment complex, preserving the Arena in a scaled-down form and adding a stadium for minor-league baseball. The Mills Corp. and Mack-Cali Corp. broke ground for the project in March 2005 after receiving final environmental clearances. [1] (http://www.icsc.org/srch/sct/sct0505/dev_leasing_9.php)

In April 2005, after months of negotiating, wrangling, and filed lawsuits (typical of many New York City metro area real-estate deals), the New York Giants organization and the NJSEA reached a deal to construct a new stadium in the Meadowlands Sports Complex to replace the 1976-constructed Giants Stadium. The board of the NJSEA approved the deal shortly thereafter. (source: The New York Times)

Although the new building is currently referred to as "Giants Stadium", it has been speculated that the naming rights will be sold to a corporate sponsor by the Giants, who received the future naming rights based on the April 2005 agreement. The Giants have agreed to pay all constructon costs for the stadium itself (estimated at $750 million in 2005), in exchange for the land and for the state of New Jersey's assumption of all debt for the 1976 stadium (as of 2005, there is still a debt balance). The state also plans to reconstruct major access roads to the complex in preparation for both the new stadium and Xanadu projects, at a cost of millions of dollars.

External link

• Meadowlands Sports Complex (http://www.meadowlands.com)