The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority has pulled listings for the Young Voices and Richard Nader’s Doo Wop concerts from their websites; those acts are expected to be moved from the Izod Center in the Meadowlands to the Prudential Center in Newark and held on June 4 and June 6, respectively.
These are the only events remaining before the 34-year-old Meadowlands arena closes its doors at the end of March:
- Maroon 5 concert on March 8
- nine Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Circus Xtreme shows on March 18-22
The only other events listed on izodcenter.com are four Disney Live! Three Classic Fairy Tales on April 18-19. But those are expected to be moved to Newark as well – and at any rate, they won’t be held at the Meadowlands.
That will do it for the Izod Center at least through the end of 2016, with no commitments to the possibility of the venue being opened in a revamped form after that.
Meanwhile, Izod’s longtime cousin, the Meadowlands Racetrack, is getting even emptier. While the grandstand closed to horse racing bettors in 2013, the NJSEA staff remained on the ground floor and the agency board members popped in once a month for meetings.
But now the NJSEA board will meet instead at the Meadowlands Commission offices at 1 DeKorte Park Plaza in Lyndhurst. So board members will get to drive past the site of the infamous, and defunct, Meadowlands EnCap golf-and-housing-on-landfills plan.
Coincidentally, the NJSEA board – which is effectively merging with the commission – will be asked to vote Thursday on a “Resolution Authorizing Execution of a Contract for Continuing Services at the 1-E Landfill and the Kingsland Landfill” – two of the EnCap landfills.
There used to be a gadfly who sometimes attended NJSEA meetings to rail about EnCap, to the frustration of NJSEA officials who informed him that they had nothing to do with it. The same situation sometimes happened at the NJMC, where someone would gripe about a Meadowlands Sports Complex issue – which was basically out of the NJMC wheelhouse except for in an advisory way.
I never anticipated that the twain shall meet – beginning with Thursday’s NJSEA board meeting in Lyndhurst.