As the Islanders make their run at the Stanley Cup, their
new home continues to rise at Belmont Park.
It’s beginning to look more like the model of UBS Arena that
Islanders owner Jon Ledecky showed off to longtime fans and potential suite
buyers at the invitation-only ‘Preview Club’ in Manhattan.
The model shows some of the special features fans will see
on the outside, like the lighthouses on the roof and trees in the window frames
that pay homage to the famous white pine in the Belmont Park paddock.
The inside features the biggest lower bowl of seats in any
NHL arena and upper-deck seats that Ledecky was the first to sit in when he
recently toured the site.
“Here I was in the third-to-top row of the arena and I felt
like I was right on top of the ice,” said Ledecky. “They put a bucket to
represent where center ice was, and it was
terrific to see how close I was even in the upper deck.”
The arena will also have Isles memorabilia from Billy
Smith’s masks to replica Stanley Cups from the team’s historic run in the early
1980s.
“Out of the blue, fans are saying thank you for building UBS
Arena,” says Ledecky of fans donating items they want to see in the arena.
“…It’s a real arena. This is happening.”