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Editorial: Randalls Island a go

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

For a time in the early 1990s, the GAA was forced to play its games in Rockland County because it was unable to cut a deal with the leaseholders of the city-owned facility. Van Cortlandt Park and Paddy’s Field in Woodlawn have also hosted the Games of the Gael in recent years. And who can forget Briarcliff Manor in Westchester and, for a brief time, Throgs Neck in the Bronx, both of which emerged as possible headquarters for the organization?
For many complex reasons, not least the internal bickering that was once so common within the association, none of these options was ever really feasible for the long term. But now things are looking a lot brighter.
The GAA learned last week that New York City will allow it to develop 25 acres on Randalls Island. If successful, the project will include a state-of-the-art stadium with seating for 10,000, restaurant and catering facilities, dressing rooms, a fitness center, and training grounds. There is also the possibility that the GAA could one day take a larger role in developing other areas of the 480-acre island.
The GAA’s next challenge — and it’s a big one — is to raise the money needed to put its plan into action. In the coming months, the city will need to see that the association has the financial clout to pull it off its ambitious gambit. No doubt Monty Maloney, the former GAA president who has championed the effort to make the dream a reality, will soon be working the phones hard. He says investors have already shown a keen interest in the project. With unassailable logic, he makes the pitch that “people should remember that we have tried to get land for over 50 years. This has been given to us free.”
New York Gaels have watched with envy as smaller organizations in Chicago and Boston managed to develop impressive facilities for their sportsmen. But now it’s the Big Apple’s turn. With a commitment from the region’s Irish business community and other interested individuals, in a few years New York can have a facility of its own that is the envy of any city, anywhere.

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