Nassau Coliseum lease takes a bow to veterans

Daily Point

The arena may go, but the memorial must stay

Over the last two decades, Nassau County has gone through several iterations of a lease on Nassau Coliseum and the land surrounding it — land the county owns.

But the newest version — a 175-page document that would make Las Vegas Sands the property’s tenant, pending the Nassau County Legislature’s approval — is quite different from leases of the past.

For starters, there’s the money. The financial commitment in rent and revenue is far larger than was promised in the past. When SMG — the Coliseum’s management company during most of the New York Islanders’ tenure — held the lease, the county’s revenue hovered at around $2.5 million a year. After the lease changed hands in 2015, that number bumped up to a minimum of $4 million annually.

The Sands lease starts with a $54 million payment Sands owes two business days after the lease takes effect with the legislature’s OK. In addition, Sands would have to pay a minimum base rent of $5 million a year, plus annual payments for community benefits and public safety, even if the company doesn’t win a casino license. Those payments total nearly $8 million — more than three times what SMG paid. But if Sands gets a casino license, those annual payments skyrocket, ultimately totaling $96.3 million to the county, town, and surrounding communities and for public safety.

Of that, at least $4 million a year will go toward community benefits if the license is secured — and at least $2 million annually if it is not — both for the entire length of the 99-year lease. And the lease requires at least 40% of the total benefits to be “used for initiatives directly benefiting the residents of Uniondale …”

As for the development itself, the lease lets Sands use the property for anything from entertainment to conference space to medical offices to residential development. Prohibited uses include the sale of cannabis and pornographic materials, big-box retailers, and “any use or activity that is morally offensive in the reasonable determination of the Landlord” — meaning the county.

If Sands wins one of the three casino licenses being offered by the state, it promises to build a luxury hotel with at least 500 rooms, a pool, suites and more, along with a casino and entertainment venue that includes at least 3,600 seats. If Sands doesn’t get a license, it’s still required to build a mixed-use complex, including a hotel with at least 200 rooms and similar amenities, an entertainment venue with at least 3,600 seats, and up to 500 housing units. The lease also contains timetables for “plan B”; Sands must present alternative plans within six months after its application rejection and build the development within five years.

Other controversial aspects of past leases seem to be addressed by the new one. Where the county used to have to pay for some maintenance, capital improvements and utility costs, or go through a clunky reimbursement process that didn’t always work, the new lease puts the “sole, full and exclusive responsibility” on Sands.

The new lease answers other questions as well — like whether Sands has the right to demolish Nassau Coliseum (it does) and whether it can sublease any of the property (it can).

But even as the lease has evolved over time, some things haven’t changed. The new lease with Sands requires the tenant to build a Veterans memorial — at a cost of no less than $1 million.

So the “Coliseum” part of the development might not stay. But the “Nassau Veterans Memorial” piece apparently will.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

And the winner is …

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Reference Point

Age-old qualms

Age is all the political rage these days.

Democrats are wringing their hands and Republicans are licking their chops over the decision by President Joe Biden, now 80, to seek another term. Don Lemon was fired at CNN after saying that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, now a GOP presidential candidate, was past her prime at 51. Haley recently said any politician over 75 should be subject to a mandatory mental competency test, which also would apply to the Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, 76. And numerous pundits and politicians in both major parties are questioning California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s fitness for the job at age 89.

In truth, age has been an age-old obsession in politics. The topic was explored seven decades ago by Newsday’s editorial board in a piece titled “The Prime of Life.” That May 4, 1953 editorial considered a Republican state senator from upstate Newburgh named Thomas C. Desmond who felt compelled — apparently by criticism he had received — to declare that at 65 years of age he was not old. He further stated that the tendency to say that anyone over 65 is old is “nonscientific, non-realistic and socially harmful mischief.”

His detractors might have been motivated by the fact that Desmond had held his seat since 1931. Or by the fact that the life expectancy for U.S. males back then was — yup — 65, though anyone reaching that golden age could expect to live another 12.9 years, according to the Social Security Administration.

Desmond presumably was a fan of the 19th century French writer Jules Renard who famously wrote, “It is not how old you are, but how you are old.”

Desmond, an MIT-trained engineer who as president of a Newburgh shipyard built vessels for the U.S. Navy, supplied statistics on the graying of New York State from a report by a state legislative committee he chaired on “Problems of the Aging.” The numbers showed seniors were becoming an ever-larger share of the population (a process that continued for decades). And he decried the policy of mandatory retirement ages, usually 65, a point with which the editorial board concurred.

“From then on, Desmond says, the aging person begins to decline, not because of his age but because he is idle,” the board wrote. “Forced retirement becomes a fatal disease. As Bernard Baruch, years past retirement, said, ‘There is no use lengthening the lives of people if there is nothing for them to do.’ This policy is bad for the national and state economies as well as for the persons directly involved.”

The report, the board noted, showed that older workers are as productive as younger workers and that “when quality is involved, the work of the more experienced is better.” Another conclusion: Absenteeism among older workers was much lower than younger workers.

Employers, the board concluded, “must revise their thinking. They cannot afford to retire an experienced man at 65. He is, in the well substantiated view of Sen. Desmond, in the prime of life.”

As for Desmond himself, he did not go gentle into that good night. He held office another five years, retiring on Dec. 31, 1958, at age 71, the longest-serving state lawmaker at the time, according to published reports.

Desmond went on to beat the actuarial tables as well. He died on a trip back to MIT in 1972 at the age of 85.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie, Amanda Fiscina-Wells @adfiscina