With the advent of the Australian Open upon the sports world, the questions looms. What is the U.S. Open going to do about the Arther Ashe Stadium in New York? The past 3 years rain has interfered with the singles finals and has accounted for the tournament's three worst television ratings since 1992. They need to figure somthing out before they loose all there TV sponsorships which partially accounts for $200 million in revenue each . New York is going to be fine either way boasting $420 million of generated revenue from this two week event.
The U.S. Open has asked New York for a considerable amount of money to renovate and build a retractible roof over the Arther Ashe Stadium. The only problem with this is that, in order to put a roof on it you need to shell out a cool 225 mil. Due to the foundation on which the stadium sits being extremely soft, they would need to build a completely seperate entity for the roof to sit on. Which would also need to be drilled 200 feet deep into the nearest bedrock for support. The U.S. Open has an "estimate" of what this is going to cost New York in total, and they came up with $450 million for everything. This "estimate" is not that bad considering you get the highest-attended annual sporting event in the world.
There dependency upon each other leaves the U.S. Open and New York in a difficult spot, which is going take some creative funding and thinking to fix. We are going to have to wait and see what happens, but my guess is the U.S. Open isn't moving for a long time.
~Richie Marsico
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703398504576100210037238844.html?KEYWORDS=sports
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