Spike Lee Supports MSG Staying Where It Is

Knicks superfan Spike Lee lent his support to his beloved Madison Square Garden at a City Council hearing on the Garden’s future, but wasn’t able to sway Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Also shooting air balls were Knicks greats Walt Frazier, Earl (The Pearl) Monroe and John Starks, who all appeared at City Hall to pressure the Council to extend a long-term permit to the legendary arena.

But Quinn wasn’t convinced.

As the Council member who represents midtown Manhattan, the mayoral front-runner holds enormous sway over the Garden’s future as it battles to land a permit that will allow it stay in its current 33rd St. location indefinitely.
Transit advocates have been pushing to evict the Garden to expand and improve Penn Station — an effort endorsed last month by the City Planning Commission, which voted to grant just a 15-year permit to the Garden.

Quinn had stayed out of the controversy for months but weighed in for the first time Wednesday, just as a Council committee prepared to consider the matter. She said she backs a 10-year permit so the city can fix “a dismal Penn Station that is dangerous (and) overcrowded.”

“Finding a new location for the Garden is likely the only way to address the ongoing capacity and safety issues at Penn Station,” she wrote in a letter to Garden President Hank Ratner.

Quinn’s opposition came despite the star-studded full-court press from Garden supporters.

“It’s called the world’s most famous arena,” Lee, a constant courtside presence at Knicks games, told the Council committee considering the Garden’s permit application. “You just don’t move from that ... When you come to the Garden, it’s the mecca. And the Garden is just as important as MoMA, Metropolitan [Museum of] Art, Lincoln Center. It is part of the culture of New York City.”

Monroe, Starks and Frazier didn’t testify but told reporters that Council should back the Garden’s proposal. “If not for Madison Square Garden, I wouldn’t be who I am,” Frazier told the Daily News. “I’m shocked [at the opposition]. Why people are complaining I have no idea.”

“I can’t see it being any other place,” added Starks. “It’s done so much for the city of New York.”

Garden execs, who sunk nearly $1 billion into a renovation of the building, said it’s a lack of government funding stopping a new Penn Station, not their perch atop it — and noted they’d still own the land and be legally allowed to use it for an office tower or another purpose even without the special permit from the city.

The Garden’s push is also complicated politically because its owner, James Dolan, is locked in a fierce labor dispute with workers at Cablevision, which he also owns. The Communications Workers of America union launched a TV and newspaper ad Wednesday calling Dolan a “threat to workers everywhere” and saying his businesses shouldn’t get government perks.

The Council land use committee didn’t vote on the arena’s permit Wednesday, but plans to vote later this year.



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