In addition to the excitement of the Rangers clinching a playoff berth the night before, there was much discussion at last night’s season closer about the renovations planned for the Garden.

When you spend 42+ games a season in a place, it starts to feel like your second home. When your landlord says they are going to make capital improvements to your building, you hold your breathe. Will my maintenance (ticket prices) go up? Will my view be changed ( lose my seats)? Will I still have access to my favorite places in the building?

Questions like these and much other speculation was the order of the evening. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know how much I love all my seatmates in Section 409. We are one big Ranger hockey family in the Blues. Sight-lines and accessibility aside, the primary concern seemed to be, will we be split up in the wake of these renovations?

Aside from being 40 years old, there isn’t much wrong with the Garden from a patron’s standpoint. It is accessible to all manner of public transport and it is centrally located. It has kept pace with the times in choices of food and drink venues. The only thing it doesn’t have is an abundance of those all important luxury boxes closer to the ice.

I wouldn’t be naive  enough to suggest that, based on profit, the rank and file fan is more important then those suited denizens of the wealthy corporations that purchase the boxes. But, it has been, as Mark Messier calls us, the Garden Faithful, who have supported the Rangers and MSG in good times and bad. Since 1994, the bad times certainly have outnumbered the good.

The message on the ice for the first home game after the lockout was Thank You Fans.  Ticket prices were not increased. In fact, they were reduced by 10% from prior years. But prices have continued to rise and a 400 level seat has risen 10 % since that first post-lockout season. In fact, the Garden has stuck it to the fans this season with the prices of playoff tickets. The cost of all four rounds of the playoffs will be more then the price of a entire regular season ticket. That’s a pretty tough pill for the “working-class” fan to swallow. 

I sincerely hope that the Garden Faithful will not have to absorb the cost of the new renovation in outrageously overpriced tickets and concessions. If by making most of the center ice 300 level seats boxes, I hope the powers that be might consider opening up the Garden ceiling again and removing some of the overhanging suites. This would return the ceiling to it’s former glory and improve the sight-lines at the 400 level.

From the little I was able to discern from the MSG news segment regarding the renovations, it looks like Section 409 might be safe. But, it would be nice to have some reassurance. I realize that these plans for the renovation are just that, plans. The Garden may very well be posturing with the City by releasing these plans.

Cablevision was successful in getting the kibosh put on the plans for the West Side “Jets” Stadium in favor of their new “Garden”, the new Penn Station and the Moynihan Post Office. Recently, the City Council has retroactively withdrawn MSG’s tax rebate and the Dolans are pissed off.  If  some mutually agreeable understanding can be reached between the City, State and the Dolans regarding taxes and financing, these renovation plans could be rendered moot.  We could very well be moving to new digs in the future.

All our hand wringing now about our seats and our “Garden” will be for naught. Only time will tell if we’ll be walking in the entrances to a new “Garden” on Ninth and Tenth Aves. instead of the renovated Garden on Seventh and Eighth.