$93 million indoor track nearing completion in New York

It's hard to make money on something that cost 93 million.

The PSAL will pay for busing like they do for Icahn.

dkny64 wrote:

Would you mind explaining the route?

2 train to Chambers Street. X7 bus.

it's easy to get to Icahn in the Spring for Saturday morning meets. Taking the subway or bus to lower Manhattan or Fort Hamilton Brooklyn is not easy for kids from Rockaway or the Bronx. I look forward to taking the R train to Fort Hamilton and waiting by the Verrazano Bridge on Sunday morning for a bus that comes every 45 minutes.

Nevertheless, another venue for meets is great. Staten Island with their rich track tradition deserves a training facility.

This is going to be a wonderful resource for those Ramapo-Montclair State dual meets.

Will SI be good enough for minor indoor meets like Millrose or World Indoors?

Ivyguy wrote:

I wonder whether Heps would be interested. I suppose that if the track really were significantly faster than the Armory (or Harvard), they might be; otherwise, I imagine they might prefer another facility, because if the meet were on SI attendance would really dip.

I dont think the attendance would "really dip".

Do track fans not realize that most of the 'fans' are fellow team members, parents/family and a few alumns.

There are 33 athletes at an indoor Heps per gender. 66 total. 6 paid coaches. Let's say 6 volunteer coaches. That's 78 people right there x 8= 624 people. But a number of kids that don't make heps go to watch. At Cornell, we'd easily get 50 guys/girls at Heps that didn't make the meet but went to watch.

At a minimu, let's say it's just 25 people per program. 25 x 8 = 200.

So just in terms of athletes (whether competing at heps or not) and coaches you are looking at between 824 and 1024 people.

Then you have parents. There are theoretically up to 528 competing athletes (33 x 16). If 1/3rd of the kids competing parents show up, you are dealing with 350 fans. If half show up, it's 528.

So you can get to 1500 people in the stands without even counting fans - simply parents and athletes on the schools

If the meet in NYC, you'll get an extra 100 'fans'. If it's in Staten Island, maybe 20 don't show.

We watch all over the country as cities build million dollar football facilities and no one says a word. Then a place builds an indoor track and people complain! This is EXACTLY why track &field is a sport on par with bowling in this country. I'd like to see million dollar tracks in every city just like football stadiums

Attention another non-thinking idiot...now this affords competition for the monopolistic Armory center and for literally thousands of high school runners (like the team who had the first three sub nine minute two milers in history from the same school in the same race this past outdoors) who are slowly but surely being cost-prohibitively run out of the armory. (Check into that!!)Know what you say.

NYCRunner2 wrote:

total waste of money. Staten Island has exactly one runner (Mike Cassidy), the rest are fat Italians.

No one is going to take the ferry to SI to watch some out of shape runners compete in some pseudo winter "race".

I agree about being "cost-prohibitively run out of the armory" Did you also know that the armory charges family members 7 dollars to watch a rinky dink meet? It is embarrassing to have a 3 minute half miler or 9 second 55 meter runner come to the armory on a Sunday morning with her parents and grandmother and have them charged 27 dollars for admission and another 20 to 30 dollars to eat.

Competition will be good.

NYCRunner2 wrote:

total waste of money. Staten Island has exactly one runner (Mike Cassidy), the rest are fat Italians.

No one is going to take the ferry to SI to watch some out of shape runners compete in some pseudo winter "race".

Professional races are not how they will make money. Take a look at how over-utilized the Armory is. High Schools and colleges will keep this facility busy pretty much every Fri - Sunday from Nov - March. I expect local HS meets will fill up a good number of the other days.

coach wrote:

I agree about being "cost-prohibitively run out of the armory" Did you also know that the armory charges family members 7 dollars to watch a rinky dink meet? It is embarrassing to have a 3 minute half miler or 9 second 55 meter runner come to the armory on a Sunday morning with her parents and grandmother and have them charged 27 dollars for admission and another 20 to 30 dollars to eat.

Competition will be good.

Yep. It cost an NYRR employee $7 to watch me run 2:47.

Rumor has it there will be no admission fee for most of the meets and also unlimited free parking.

I'd invest in a map.

Steve on a cell in Brooklyn wrote:

I'd invest in a map.

Seriously.

The ridiculous thing is the tiny size of Staten Island. The cost of the track is two hundred dollars per resident. Do you honestly think anyone is going to go there from outside the island? No. The Armory is more centrally located to everything except literally Staten Island itself. Do they need their own track? Well, I guess it's nice to have one. But they knew they were in the boonies when they moved there in the first place.

Solomon Grundy wrote:

This is going to be a wonderful resource for those Ramapo-Montclair State dual meets.

Hour+ bus ride from Ramapo.

NJ Possible wrote:

Solomon Grundy wrote:

This is going to be a wonderful resource for those Ramapo-Montclair State dual meets.

Hour+ bus ride from Ramapo.

Point taken, but I think that Solomon's general principle still holds: it should be a great facility for a lot of NJ college teams. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

From what I've heard the facility is already getting a ton of interest from schools, both HS and College that have either already established events wanting to move their events to Staten Island or start new events. They have also had number of college conferences reach out to them about their championships.

USATF should also jump on this site for their National Championships. Travel and lodging in Staten Island is not as expensive as NYC but you have the ability to take a free ferry into Manhattan. It's the best of both worlds.