The Subtle Humbling of James Dolan
A 5-year permit for Madison Square Garden is everything he didn't want
James Dolan remains one of the most powerful men in New York State, if not America. The reviled owner of the Knicks (and the less hated owner of the Rangers) controls some of the most exclusive real estate on Earth. Madison Square Garden is his, as well as Radio City and the Beacon Theatre. Dolan was previously CEO of Cablevision, the cable TV behemoth founded by his father. His net worth has climbed into the billions. The Knicks alone, even after two decades of futility, are one of the great gems of American professional sports, likely worth six billion or more on the open market. If a business is to be done in New York, it’s usually done on Dolan’s terms.
Slowly, though, this is changing. The New York City Council, made up of 51 lawmakers who are overwhelmingly left-leaning Democrats, will soon vote to give Madison Square Garden a mere five more years to operate, as is, in Manhattan. Two committees passed the five-year permit and the full body will likely follow suit. Dolan has longed for an operating permit that is permanent—no more wrangling with pesky little legislators—or at least extends another decade, like the measure he won in 2013. Even Mayor Eric Adams’ Planning Commission wanted Madison Square Garden to have a permit that stretched to 2033. The City Council, now adversarial to the mayor, rebuffed his planning agency. The five-year extension is the shortest in the Garden’s history.
Dolan has spent decades bullying and cajoling New York politicians in both parties. He is a heavy donor to Democrats when they are in power and is happy to back Republicans if they have any say over his business. The old power brokers of the state were perpetually deferential. Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker from 1994 until his indictment in 2015, was a devoted Rangers fan who single-handedly scuttled Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s great dream of a new football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. Bloomberg wanted the stadium to host a potential Olympics in 2012 and serve as the centerpiece of what became the Hudson Yards neighborhood. Dolan saw a competitor to MSG and wanted the project dead; the stadium plan, for a variety of reasons, needed state approval. Silver, then the most powerful Democrat in Albany, killed it.
In 2011, Andrew Cuomo was elected governor, and he and Dolan became fast friends. The men, only two years apart, shared a love of Billy Joel and the burden of following in the footsteps of extremely successful fathers. Dolan plowed hundreds of thousands of dollars into his political campaigns and was rewarded with a pliant state government. Madison Square Garden has enjoyed an indefensible property tax exemption since the early 1980s and Cuomo made sure Albany never tried to repeal it. His predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, had come close to forcing the arena, which sits above the dismal Penn Station, to move several blocks away; urbanists long dreamed of a renovated train station that would resemble the marvel that was demolished in the 1960s. As long as Cuomo was governor, that was never going to happen.
Cuomo and Silver are now gone, both forced from office in unrelated scandals. Silver died last year. The current speaker, Carl Heastie, and the governor, Kathy Hochul, like Dolan well enough. He has become a top donor to Hochul’s campaigns and Heastie dropped the puck at a recent Rangers game. Dolan’s abuse of facial recognition technology angered Democrats in the City Council and Albany, but it wasn’t enough for the legislature to revoke his cherished tax break. Heastie’s Assembly blocked the State Senate from forcing MSG to pay property taxes. In April, it looked like Dolan, flirting with genuine political backlash for the first time ever, had won.
Albany politics and city politics aren’t the same, however. Dolan is learning this the hard way.