Stairmaster said:
News flash: the university can and will build the hockey arena on the intended site. Any opposition by municipal government is purely symbolic. This is just an exercise in whipping up a frenzy of hatred. And hey, whatever helps you guys cope.
The comparison to University Park, PA is deeply flawed. No private residents live in University Park, whereas in Storrs, people live on privately held land. Not all land in Storrs is owned by the university. If you doubt this, PM me and I'll show you the deed of the house I'm sitting in.
If you actually followed town politics, the hillbillies are not the "active fringe", but I can see none of you actually care to have that explained. Just be lucky that the university isn't located in Willington, Ashford, or Chaplin.
If the university wants to buy your house to build a dorm, they should be able to do it without the peanut gallery chiming in on how terrible UConn treats Mansfield.
I say this as a non-Alum, who has done business with both entities and has appeared before the hillbillies enough to know what I talking about.
You do have a certain portion of the community that IMHO is over represented in the local government who who like nothing better than for the U to remain stagnant or even recede it's footprint. You don't need to look past the most recent comments on the Master Plan to see it on full display.
The truth of the matter is that the U is one of the more important economic drivers for the State going forward. CT needs a highly educated and skilled workforce to compete against lower cost regions. Having a top 10 public university is a lynch pin for that plan.
What has always blown my mind is the lack of vision by Town leadership to understand they have what every local government wants, a diverse, younger skewing consumer base. The fact that anything close to Storrs Center took this long is an embarrassment to public administrators everywhere.
The reason no one lives in University Park (Not sure that's completely accurate, but whatever) is that Penn State bought everything inside that boundary decades ago. That exactly what UConn should be doing. For a school it's size and location it is unnecessarily squeezed.
Should they develop the Depot Campus, absolutely. But, that's not going to be a picnic either as you saw with the tech park. A tech park that was built partially because UConn promised to convert a significant portion of the Depot campus as compensatory farmland.
If you don't what your house bought through eminent domain, that's perfectly understandable. Just don't pretend it's smart from a planning perspective. The state's best interest is to build out to what they need for the number of students and research facilities they think they can attract.
Mansfield would do well to look at State College as a model. For being in the middle of nowhere is surprisingly modern and quaint at the same time. I'd also look at the surrounding towns to see what they look like in comparison for a clue to what Mansfield would look like without the U.