Gampel/Hartford/both poll

[Salty Dog]

I'm fine with playing games in Hartford. But under NO circumstances should the school be PAYING to make that happen. They should be paying us!

 

[whalerfan]

I'm all for bringing a game to Bridgeport. (But I have my own reasons for that.)

 

[HeyMoe]

Voted Gampel, but if they had to play in Hartford I would prefer it to only be when students are on break.

Couldn't agree with this more. When students are on campus, all games should be at Gampel.

 

[ToolzieFan]

Many have noted that all games during break should be at XL, and that’s totally reasonable. As someone who wants 1/3 to 1/2 the games at XL, I think the other idea I like is to put most or all weekend home games at Gampel and have most non-break XL games be on weeknights.

 

[1999GoodSon]

Couldn't agree with this more. When students are on campus, all games should be at Gampel.

I don't like half solutions, but this is actually brilliant. I just went through this, even the kids with cars probably aren't going to drive to Hartford on a Tuesday. It's actually hard to understand why, once Gampel was up, it wasn't implemented. We're all huge fans, but it's their team.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

I think the more important question is "what is the long term plan for the XL Center?".

My guess is those currently in charge prefer the idea of kicking the can down the road and let it be someone else's problem. The thing is however that there is very little road left.

The options are:

1. Continue putting more and more lipstick on the pig while they can still locate the pig's lips and maybe squeeze another decade out of the facility, which will end up throwing a ridiculous amount of money away maintaining the facility over that time.
2. Demo the current building (could be quite expensive but will be necessary at some point) and build a replacement (cost will be well into nine figures) without any true primary tenant or legitimate prospects of generating sufficient revenues to justify the cost.
3. Demo the current building and find some other use (luxury residential has failed in Hartford more than once; retail space is a non-starter as there is no longer a market; commercial office space is a shrinking market and Hartford currently has a surplus of inventory).

The issues, as they pertain to UConn are for every dollar spent on option 1 the pressure to increase the number of games played in Hartford will rise and for option 2 the demand to play the lion's share of the games in Hartford will dominate conversations. Option 3 will be a difficult to impossible sell, unless some dimwitted, deep pocketed developer arrives on the scene but sadly, while there are many dimwitted developers out there, you won't find any with deep pockets.

There are significant fundamental problems with Hartford. If you are a resident of the state you have skin in the game and if you are a fan of the school (and/or any of its athletic programs) a vested interest in these problems being corrected. To compound the problem, Hartford isn't the only large (by Connecticut standards) city with significant fundamental problems (New Haven and Bridgeport come to mind).

What's needed is some way for each of these cities to each bring in a significant number of white collar jobs (without cannibalizing other Ct cities), develop higher end residential properties within these cities (each of the three suffer tremendously here) and then adding local nightlife sufficient enough to generate a sustainable hospitality based economy (relative to the population). If possible (again, as much of a pipe dream as what I mentioned in the above) would be for Hartford to somehow recapture its waterfront, as that is normally the most valuable property in cities/towns that are fortunate enough to have a waterfront.

I don't know how any of this will be resolved but we need to demand more and better results from our politicians.