For those who don't visit Newark often, I was in the neighborhood of the Devils' new home last night.

I noticed a couple of things:

a) it was 10 o'clock at night and there were crews still working on it.

b) it's starting to look more like a finished arena. They've enclosed some of the atrium-like spaces that had been sitting open the last few months.

Where is it being built?

I haven't been to downtown Newark in about a year. I normally go to the "Ironbound" section, which is on Ferry Street near Penn station.

It's off of Broad Street not far from City Hall. If you approach Newark from the East, which I do to go to work, the Prudential office building towers above the Prudential Center on the Newark skyline.

Penn Station is less than 1/2 a mile away from the arena (Penn Station is north of the arena) and the Ironbound isn't far, either (the Ironbound is immediately to the East of the arena).

The one thing I have a hard time imagining is how they're going to handle traffic for the hockey games. They haven't built any new access roads the way they sometimes do for new sports venues.

Unlike the Meadowlands, there are all kinds of mass transportation that service the arena, but there doesn't seem to be the parking they have at the Meadowlands.

yeah I took the NJ transit train to Penn Station last night on my way to the game, and my sister's bf (a huge devils fan) and I tried to figure out where the arena was as we stopped at broad street. Of course my sister was right in her guess that it was by Newark Penn. Not enjoying city driving, I like how there's lots of mass transit options to get there, although you are right Chico in that it will be quite a pain to find parking if one was driving there....

Bump

The building is coming along, but I don't know where they're going to put all the cars that come with crowds of 18,000 people.

I haven't walked the area on foot, but there aren't any parking garages or big lots visible in the couple of surrounding blocks.

They're also going to put up concrete barricades to prevent terrorist attacks. The Newark police director said the street was too close to the arena to meet post-9/11 standards to prevent potential car bombs.

I think parking could be a problem. The was an article in the Star Ledger about a week ago stating that most parking was going to be blocks from the arena.

I'd know more, but I'm only a station away from Newark so I'll be taking the rail to every game.

I missed that.

People don't like remote parking. Look at all the complaining about Giants Stadium and going to NFL games is a lot more ingrained than going to Devils games.

Not to mention the fact that the heart of the hockey season is in the dead of winter when no one wants to walk more than 100 yards.

Found the article.

Link.

There's actually a PDF in the article with a map of all the lots.

Looks interesting.

Glad I can easily take the train in!

Thanks for the link

Some of those lots are pretty far to walk, especially in January and February.

It reminds me some of the parking situation around Wrigley Field, where all the lots are privately run.

The first time I went there, I parked about a 20-minute walk away. But that was in June or July. Big difference.

This is not good.

They'll probably work things out eventually, but I predict a level of chaos early on.

To me, having lived my whole life with 50 miles of NYC, you have confidence when you go to a crowded event in NYC that things will be run as well as possible.

The NYPD is phenomonal on that front and they've been handling hundreds of public events for years and years.

Newark doesn't have anything close to that experience and the city government's track record is that it can't do much well on any level.

fwiw I read somewhere that there were only 3,000 parking spaces within two blocks, and I'm sure most of them will get scarfed up by season ticket holders with preferred parking. Either take the train or bus or prepare for headaches

I don't mind taking the train myself, though it's harder for me since my train gets off at Broad Street then I have to hop onto a bus or light rail to get to Penn Station then walk several minutes to the arena. Overall it'll probably take an hour to get there where I could (theoretically) drive to Newark in just over half an hour...but it would just be theoretically since I'd be sitting in traffic and trying to find a lot, probably find one blocks away.

And I didn't really like driving to the Meadowlands either, both because of the expensive parking cost, the dumb packed lot and because of a death-defying right turn in I had to take where I crossed over like four lanes on a highway just to get over to the arena.