Madison Square Garden is going through a renovation phase that will continue over the next two years. Phase one of the reconstruction took place over the summer in the span of four months. One year’s work was fit into four months which is ludicrous if you stop to think about all the work required and invested into the project. Each summer over the next two years the Garden will be shut down for four months in order to complete the Garden transformation. The estimated renovation cost will be about $850 million. The final product is expected to be nothing but spectacular. The new finished arena is expected to have “wider concourses with views of the city, new first-class food and entertainment amenities, improved sightlines, more comfortable seating, a dynamic new scoreboard, sound and LED video systems in HD, new luxury suites, clubs and hospitality areas, and new one-of-a-kind bridges. Fans will discover a state-of-the-art venue that's as unforgettable as the moments that happen here” (msgtransformation.com).

This project would not have been possible if it wasn’t for one particular case which took place in 1905. The case was Lochner v. New York. This case set a precedent that the state cannot interfere with the “right of contract between employers and employees.” The case became one of the most important and cited cases in Supreme Court history. At the time New York State wanted to eliminate employers’ abuse of workers but the state lost the case by a majority of 5-4 because contracts between employers and employees were protected under the fourteenth amendment. The book “Lochner v. New York” written by Paul Kens explains to the public the importance of this court case and how it has affected the rest of the world due to its outcome. As cited by the book “‘the case also raised a host of significant questions regarding the impetus of state legislatures to enter the workplace and regulate hours, wages, and working conditions; of the role of courts as monitors of the constitutionality of state regulation of the economy; and of the place of economic and moral theories in judicial thinking”’ (Lochner v. New York Preface).

The case Lochner v. New York has allowed the people renovating Madison Square Garden to work on it and put in as many hours as they have during those four grueling months in which they accomplished a year’s worth of work. Each year the workers have to meet a deadline established by the chairman of the Garden in order for the venues to be ready and in place to let teams like the Rangers and the Knicks have a home when their season starts. I’m sure before the court case took place the state would have found the deadlines to be outlandish and would have been against the renovation because of the long hours and hard labor. Thanks to the court case though the workers are able to work the hours they feel they can handle and contractors are able to employ workers without having to worry about the state accusing them of trying to exploit their workers. The project of remodeling MSG is well on its way and people can’t wait to see the outcome of the world’s most famous arena. People can look back to Lochner v. New York and be happy of the outcome because that court case along with New Yorker's tax dollars allowed this renovation to happen.