By: Serach Nissim

About a decade ago the Meadowlands Arena was officially shuttered, now leaders have bold new plans for the site.

The 20,000-seat venue, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, along the banks of the Hackensack River, had once been a famous sports and concert venue. Per the NY Post, the arena, opened in 1981, was built to host the NJ Nets basketball team. Soon after, the NJ Devils hockey team and the Seton Hall Pirates men’s collegiate basketball team also started using the arena. In 2007, however, the Prudential Center opened in nearby Newark as the new Devils home arena.

Seton Hall also moved their basketball games there, as it was closer. In 2012, when Brooklyn’s Barclays Center opened, and the Nets left NJ, leaving the arena desolate. In 2015, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority voted to shutter Meadowlands Arena. The site has also been called different names including Brendan Byrne, Continental, and the IZOD Center.

Most recently, the state-owned facility was used as a rehearsal stage by major concert-touring music stars like Drake, Dua Lipa, and Justin Timberlake, as well as by NBCUniversal for television filming, including for popular shows such as “The Walking Dead,” “The Enemy Within,” and “The Equalizer”. These endeavors only help the venue to break even, however.

Now, local business leaders want to raze the venue and build an all-new oversized convention center with exhibition, meeting and banquet spaces. Even the Meadowlands Chamber of Commerce is on board with the plans. As per the NY Post, chamber president and CEO Jim Kirkos said the new $1.6 billion center would be a boon for the Meadowlands, calling the convention center “quite frankly a no-brainer.”. The space could be booked for most of the year and could potentially rake in up to $30 billion over three decades, as per an economic impact study commissioned by a chamber affiliate.

“If we built the facility like we envisioned, it’s too much of an economic impact to walk away from,” Kirkos excitedly told The Post in a phone interview. “Because right now we have a donut hole, right? The arena is not producing anything.”

Glorious moments at the Meadowlands Arena had included three Stanley Cup championships, two NBA Finals for the then-New Jersey Nets and numerous concerts including by Bruce Springsteen. “It was a great place,” said Matt Lucciano, a 62-year-old surveyor from East Hanover. “Not the flashiest or fanciest, but it was never really about the venue so much as who was playing there,” he said, lamenting its current desolation. “Every time I drive past it, I have to look away because it’s sad to see a place that once hosted the biggest bands in the world just sitting there in that condition,” Lucciano added. “I have great memories there, but I’m not against seeing it demolished and something better put in its place — something that’s actually used.”

Per the Post, the proposed 460,000-square-foot convention center would include 300,000 square feet of open space that could be used for exhibitions or sporting events; 100,000 square feet of meeting space; and 60,000 square feet of banquet space that could host events of up to 2,500 people, based on the impact study.

Kirkos said a Meadowlands Convention Center could host as many as 250 to 300 “event days,” ranging from conferences and trade shows to graduations and sports events.