NY lawmakers want to end MSG's decades-long property tax exemption – it isn't likely

The world-famous venue received its tax exemption in 1982, when Mayor Ed Koch pushed for its passage. Koch and other city officials were attempting to keep the New York Knicks and Rangers from following in the footsteps of the New York Giants, who fled the city for the Meadowlands in New Jersey in 1976. The Garden's owner at the time, Gulf & Western, accepted the lofty deal under an agreement that the tax exemption would end if either the Knicks or Rangers stopped playing its home games at the Midtown arena over the next decade. When the Dolan family bought the Garden in 1994, it inherited the same exemption.