An Open Letter to Governor Christine Whitman: The news that the Yankee Nets organization was adding the Devils hockey team to its portfolio of progressional groups elicited cheers in Hoboken, New Jersey. It meant that the proposal to build a hockey arena in Hoboken was finally dead. The Devils will join with the Nets in locating to Newark ending a two year campaign by Devils’ owner, John J. McMullen, to convince Governor Christine Todd Whitman that Hoboken was the preferable location for New Jersey to subsidize an arena. For over two years, the Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition, a local, nonprofit group of organizations and individuals vigorously protested Mr. McMullen’s dream of building an 18,000-seat hockey arena over the New Jersey Transit railroad tracks in southern Hoboken. Some peoples’ dreams are other peoples’ nightmares. The arena would have been in operation almost 250 days a year bringing thousands of cars and revelers to a city that already has a severe lack of parking, streets clogged with cars, buses and trucks and rowdy weekend visitors. For all of the destruction that would have been brought upon the city, Hoboken would not have received a penny of tax money since the rail yard is state property. The Coalition organized a letter, fax and e-mail writing campaign to Governor Whitman urging her not to permit the huge 17-story arena to rise over southern Hoboken. Over 1,000 signatures were collected on a petition and sent to her in June 1999. Responses to correspondence addressed to the governor and various New Jersey officials revealed that as late as December 1999 that the decision had still not been made as to whether the Hoboken plan would be denied. In a conversation with John McMullen in late September 1999, he asked the Coalition to “stop writing those letters.” It was clear from the interchange that Trenton was not responding the way that Mr. McMullen had hoped and that the citizen campaign was working. The people of Hoboken extend their gratitude to Governor Whitman for having heard their concerns about the future of their city, and for having responded to the wishes of the people of Hoboken. Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition member groups: Coalition for a Better Waterfront Guardians of the Fourth Ward Hoboken Alliance for Lower Taxes (H.A.L.T.) The Environment Committee of Hoboken, Inc. Waterfront Coalition of Hudson & Bergen