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As one era of New York soccer played inside a baseball stadium ends next summer when New York City FC moves into their soccer-specific stadium in Queens, another might soon begin, if the grocery-store billionaire now operating the minor-league baseball stadium on Staten Island has his way.
John Catsimatidis, head of the Gristedes grocery-store empire and owner of local conservative AM talk radio station WABC, is also now calling the shots at Staten Island University Hospital Community Park, the baseball stadium that opened in 2001 on the island's north shore directly next to the St. George Ferry Terminal, Staten Island's one main hub for public transportation, be it ferries, buses, or the island's one train.
Catsimatidis gave the New York Post an interview last week ahead of the start of the season for the Staten Island FerryHawks, the independent-league baseball team that now calls the Staten Island stadium home and that includes Catsimatidis as an owner and managing partner. In that interview, Catsimatidis says of the stadium, "We want to make it a full entertainment facility," and part of that apparently includes bringing in...a soccer team.
What soccer team, you might ask? Totally unclear and unknown at this point, though the stadium is already getting into soccer-related programming as soon as this summer.
On Monday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a target of lots of criticism from the noted Republican Catsimatidis, who threatened to close all his grocery stores if Mamdani became Mayor, then backed off that threat once Mamdani became Mayor — held the announcement event for the city's five free World Cup fan zones at SIUH Community Park.
