February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Last October, the GAA-linked RIGS was allocated 25 acres on Randalls Island on the East River to develop a New York stadium and headquarters, a long-held dream of Gaelic sports enthusiasts in the city.
In March, RIGS was given an additional six months to come up with the money.
“I believe they will give us that extension,” said the group’s president, Monty Moloney.
Moloney also argued that RIGS was justified in asking for one, given that the proposal had been substantially modified. It’s now been billed as a multi-sports indoor/outdoor complex.
“We’ve changed the business plan; we’ve changed the concept,” he said.
A spokesman for the New York City Parks Department said Tuesday that no decision has been made in regard to an extension but said that the city views the GAA proposal as an integral part of the development of the island.
Moloney said that RIGS had raised over $700,000 and had a further $750,000 promised, and perhaps more, from an entity that he did not want to name.
RIGS must raise $4 million of the $16 million that its business plan estimates would be needed to build the complex. He was confident that the balance of the $4 million could be raised within the Irish community, if RIGS was given adequate time.
“We want to sit down with the city in October,” he said. “There was a huge amount of interest from people who were at the meeting last week,” he said, referring to RIGS’s Aug. 17 fundraiser in Rory Dolan’s in Yonkers.
Moloney said that the money invested would be held in an escrow account. “Only 5 percent is available for soft expenses,” he said.
He added that investors would have “good control” over the project, as they would elect four places onto the nine-member board. He said that the sports complex would be a useful resource for the Irish community, as banquets, weddings and other functions could be held there.
“It will be a center where everyone can meet,” he said. “There’ll be activities for families right through the winter.”
The RIGS president added that the city was also interested in the project because of the revenue it would bring in. “It’s a win-win situation,” he said.
Meanwhile, the replacement for Downing Stadium on Randalls Island, the $45 million Icahn Stadium, will soon be available. Investor Carl Icahn donated the final $10 million, which has brought the state-of-the-art track and field facility to near completion after 12 years in the pipeline. (The Bloomberg administration has actively solicited donations from wealthy people who in return would have public projects named for them.)
“They were lucky. They were struggling to finish it,” the RIGS president said of a project. “We may down the road look for something similar,” he added, referring to the possibility of naming the complex in return for a substantial donation.
“But you can’t make that part of the business plan,” he said.
Nor has RIGS ever been dependent, he said, on money from Goodwill Sports, a non-profit that was launched in 2002 to build more than 3,000 sports fields all over the United States, each of which would commemorate a victim of the Sept. 11 attacks. RIGS announced in May that it expected to get $10 million from Goodwill Sports. Consultant Joseph Raguso, who reportedly brought RIGS and Goodwill Sports together, said at that time that “the money is coming.”
However, the non-profit has been mired in controversy in suburban New York, its home base, since last year. The Journal News, a Westchester daily, reported that the group has repeatedly missed deadlines in the process of building sports fields for the school districts of Valhalla, Eastchester and Greenburgh.
Phyllis Fitzpatrick, the executive director of Goodwill Sports, did not return calls from the Echo.
Moloney said that Goodwill Sports is now broader that the original group set up in New York. The non-profit expects to get $300 million to build the fields — although it’s not clear at this point from where — and the RIGS president remains confident that it will get $10 million.
Moloney is also optimistic about the development of Randalls Island, which Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe has predicted will be the “Central Park of the 21st century.”
“The [Irish] community has so much to gain from this,” Moloney said, adding that the East River island is now a hive of activity. “Now is the time for them to get involved,” he said.