[fishrose]

Originally Posted by Crawford

How can you build an arena on top of a pier?

I mean, it could be done, but you would need a massively reinforced new pier, and you certainly couldn't do it for $500 million. A conventional urban arena on "dry land" costs upwards of a billion.

It would be very cool if it could be done, but I would guess this would cost bare minimum $1.5 billion in 2012 dollars when all is said and done. That's serious cash, but they're VC guys, so maybe they don't mind it.

The Barclays Center in Brooklyn costs a little over $1 billion, and has no radical engineering issues. The MSG renovation in Manhattan (which is really only a temporary stopgap until they eventually relocate) will cost nearly $1 billion.

There have been several new arenas constructed within the last 10 years that cost FAR less than $1.5 billion in 2012 dollars.