8. Charles Wang
2013 Power List
The puck dropped, so to speak, and Charles Wang made it official: The Islanders will leave the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Come 2015, they’ll play at Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center. It wasn’t as if Wang didn’t try to keep them in Uniondale. The Lighthouse Project reached for the stars, only to fall short when Hempstead Town politics cut it down to size. A $400-million referendum would have let Nassau taxpayers do what he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do for himself: pay for a new arena. He had the unions and Nassau’s Republican County Executive Ed Mangano on the same side, but it was all for naught. The voters came out on that hot August day to ice the deal. And so, here we are, the last professional sports team to call Nassau home will soon be gone, and Wang won’t have to worry about the Hub ever again. Maybe he can focus on just winning the Stanley Cup instead.