New York Newsday (Arthur Staple) reports: Madison Square Garden’s renovation won’t be completed until 2012, a slightly altered timeline announced Tuesday than the one Garden executives put forth a year ago in introducing a $500-million overhaul of the arena. “We made sure to get the planning right, because we don’t want to change it midway through,” said MSG and Cablevision vice chairman Hank Ratner, who Tuesday showed off to reporters the Garden’s Presentation Center, a state-of-the-art area near the Seventh Avenue entrance that will open this summer to give fans a preview of the renovations. Work has not yet begun on the renovation, though roughly 150 MSG Network and Garden facilities employees will move across the street to 11 Penn Plaza so that their offices can be converted into concourse space in the revamped arena.
The New York Daily News (Owen Moritz) reports: Madison Square Garden will undergo a $500 million top-to-bottom renovation that will feature wider concourses and more bathrooms in addition to a giant “supersuite” and lavish corporate boxes. There will even be a party deck and two 10th-floor bridges running the length of the arena with overhead views of the playing surface. The renovation will include 20 courtside “event-level suites” complete with kitchens and lounges. One top-of-the-line suite will even have a working fireplace.
