Newark Mayor Cory Booker (at podium) and basketball star Shaquille O’Neal (right, rear) announced plans to expand the Newark Screens movie theater yesterday

Shaquille O’Neal, the iconic basketball star, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker
announced a $7 million deal yesterday to expand the Newark Screens movie
theater by 20,000 square feet, part of an effort to revitalize the city’s struggling
Central Ward.
O’Neal, a Newark native and four-time National Basketball Association champion,
announced the deal before hundreds of screaming fans at the movie theater,
located at 360-394 Springfield Avenue in Newark.
The deal between New Brunswick, N.J.-based Boraie Development and O’Neal’s
development company Miami-based O’Neal Group, involves doubling the theater
from six to 12 screens. There will be stadium seating and 3-D screens. Goldman
Sachs Urban Investment Group helped finance the project, which is expected to
create 40 construction jobs and 20 permanent jobs in Newark.
The expansion is scheduled to break ground in June and will be completed by
early 2012. [more]

From the South Florida Web site: Local brokers say former Miami Heat basketball star Shaquille O’Neal has finally sold his Miami Beach mansion, listed first in 2005 for $35 million. The buyer is Vladislav Doronin, Naomi Campbell’s boyfriend. Shaq’s 20,000-square-foot mansion has been an object of fascination and a high-end symbol of the housing crunch ever since. No details on the sale have been released, though it reportedly closed Wednesday. O’Neal had reportedly arranged a November 2007 sale to baseball star Alex Rodriguez for a price between $25 million and $27 million, but deflation took its toll in both sports and real estate and the deal fell through. A November 2008 report put the manse back on the market for $19 million. At the start of this year, another broker listed it for $25 million, and the listing price was dropped in March to $22.5 million. [more]