Conneaut officials submit financial plan to judge

Thanks for that link. For some reason, I've been fascinated with ballparks and arenas lately. A while back, I stumbled upon a really cool site that features a bit of information about a lot of past, present and future venues:

www.ballparks.com

It's worth checking out if you have some free time as it features quite a bit about the old Richfield Coliseum as well as the new Gund Arena, which looks to be an impressive facility. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the winning design for the Newark hockey arena closely resembles the "open" look of the Gund Arena since Newark seems to be looking to downtown Cleveland for inspiration.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the city of Cleveland paid for the new Browns stadium... as you said, it was likely the only way to get an NFL team to return to Cleveland. We have fickle NFL fans here in NJ but they pay to see games anyway- the waiting list for Giants season tickets is long... long enough where my (future) grandchildren will probably be the first to use them. If I were a Jets fan, I might see the tickets before I'm too old to walk, but that could change if they move to a new stadium in NYC.

Downtown Cleveland actually sounds a lot like Hoboken and Jersey City. 15 years ago, you couldn't pay someone to take property off your hands in those places. Now, no one can afford to live there. It makes sense though- the view across the river gives you a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline and there is plenty of public transportation to get you in and out of the city. No stadiums or arenas (they are five miles away in East Rutherford where they've always been) but there are tons of expensive waterfront condo towers in Jersey City and lots of night clubs in Hoboken.

ProgRay: i agree w/you. I like both parks as well and as equals. The big plus for me w/CLP is cost. My kids like the place along w/ Camping at CamperLand (10 bucks a night, and yes, they let ya burn stuff.)
They like Cp strictly for the rides.
I love the park (clp), but it seems like they are the Spinal Tap of amusement parks. I remember the year they installed the waterslides and kiddie pool. They couldn't run the kiddiepool slide because someone forgot to get the right permit for it and the inspectors had them put up caution tap until all the paperwork was in order. That took about 3-4 months. a few years later, their carousel blew a worm gear that took 6 months to machine, (having worked in a machine shop, i questioned the time frame on that one.)
as always, i wish the park the best.

It's funny you mention Hoboken. I met with one of my former volleyball kids last night who goes to school there (Stevens) and she mentioned some street in particular that reminder her a lot of the Gateway and Warehouse districts.

Gund is a nice arena. I actually have photos from inside Richfield as they were tearing it down. I've gotta post those one of these days. I happened to run into a guy who was photographing for the company demolishing it and he led me in (after I was illegally looking around to begin with).

Hoboken is has long been hit-or-miss when it comes to nice areas but it's become more "hit" during the past decade. There is an older area of the city down by the waterfront where there are a lot of nightclubs and expensive restaurants. It has become sort of a "trendy" place to go, or the place to go if you live in NJ and don't feel like dealing with the traffic over the bridges and through the tunnels.

I'd love to see the pictures of the arena being torn down. That kind of stuff intrigues me. I remember seeing videos of Veterans Stadium in Philly being imploded and the footage mesmerized me. Same for some of the hotel/casino implosions that have taken place in Vegas during the past decade.

I hope that the new Newark arena is as nice as the Gund Arena. Too bad that many people don't seem to have any desire to go (myself included). The nice thing about the current arena is that its easy to get to... the new one would be closer but more of a pain to get to. I figure, if I'm going to deal with traffic getting into the heart of Newark, I might as well deal with traffic getting into NYC and have the city to enjoy for the evening. It's not like the NJ Devils have a rabid fan base that will walk across flaming pits to see them play so I can't see many people going through the trouble to see them play at the new arena.