Report: Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum to shutter “indefinitely”

Indoor arena The Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum aka Nassau Coliseum aka The Coliseum aka NYCB Live – located in Uniondale, New York and home to the Islanders – is scheduled to close down “indefinitely” due to the ongoing global pandemic, reports Bloomberg.

The news outlet explains further: “Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Sports and Entertainment, which operates the arena under a lease from Nassau County, is planning to shutter the venue indefinitely while it seeks investors to take over operations and pick up the remaining debt on the building, according to people familiar with the matter.”

They go on to say: “Onexim has told potential investors that it would turn over the lease in return for assuming roughly $100 million in loans on the property, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. The firm, which is laying off arena employees, could also surrender the lease to its lenders, the person said.”

An official statement from Onexim reads: “The unforeseeable and unprecedented Covid-19 crisis has had a devastating effect on the operations of the Coliseum and its finances. While we still believe in the enormous long term economic value of the Coliseum and the development of the surrounding land, we recognize that such value will be best realized by other parties.”

Patrick Clark’s article, which you can read in full here, goes on to say that the sports/concert venue has been closed since the novel coronavirus crisis hit New York / the U.S., and that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the arena had been redeveloping the property, specifically adding new offices, housing and retail space to their surrounding parking lots.

In the past three years alone, Nassau Coliseum has hosted rock and metal concerts from the likes of Kiss, U2, Judas Priest, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Def Leppard, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Twenty One Pilots, Fall Out Boy and more.

Nassau Coliseum venue photo via their Facebook page

Judas Priest Nassau Coliseum concert shot by Johnny Perilla