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New XL Center

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There is a whole different sort of donor base there as well. Apples and oranges.
 
Mr. Conehead said:
What about next to the convention center? Can be used for convention events,too, and would help grow that part of the city into an entertainment district.
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There isn't much room left over there. The front st district is taking shape and the front st apartments and UConn Hartford pretty much. Claim any available land left by the convention center.
 
Mr. Conehead said:
What about next to the convention center? Can be used for convention events,too, and would help grow that part of the city into an entertainment district.
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There isn't much room left over there. The front st district is taking shape and the front st apartments and UConn Hartford pretty much claim any available land left by the convention center.
 
Hoophound said:
People need an attitude adjustment regarding Hartford. It is not a small market. It is a larger market than Indianapolis, for instance. It is simply located between huge markets. Hartford supported the Whalers, it supports multi show concert runs and many other events.
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Check your facts. Hartford didn't support the Whalers for a long time. From 91 to 95 they were bottom 3 in NHL attendance. In 93/94, they trailed only
Ottawa in attendance and only bumped it up their final year in a toothless attempt to keep a team that was already gone.
 
The Hartford Business Journal has been giving statistics on how businesses are moving back to Hartford and the office vacancy rate is declining. Also, a tremendous amount of apartment building is going on in the city, an example of which is the Old Bank of America building on main st. Uconn at Hartford will open soon at the old Times building. In addition, there will soon be train service a number of times a day from Hartford to Boston and a Busway service from the other direction. If you put an event on in Hartford, people show up. We need a new state of the art XL center as a centerpiece for the other sporting venues, Convention Center, museums, Infinity Hall and restaurants. We can't be shortsighted and under build. Nobody from Uconn should complain about the cost in taxes when the State is spending 2 BILLION at the Campus.
 
yankeewc said:
The Hartford Business Journal has been giving statistics on how businesses are moving back to Hartford and the office vacancy rate is declining. Also, a tremendous amount of apartment building is going on in the city, an example of which is the Old Bank of America building on main st. Uconn at Hartford will open soon at the old Times building. In addition, there will soon be train service a number of times a day from Hartford to Boston and a Busway service from the other direction. If you put an event on in Hartford, people show up. We need a new state of the art XL center as a centerpiece for the other sporting venues, Convention Center, museums, Infinity Hall and restaurants. We can't be shortsighted and under build. Nobody from Uconn should complain about the cost in taxes when the State is spending 2 BILLION at the Campus.
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You better believe I have a right to complain if a $500 million dollar arena in Hartford involves any of my taxes. UConn has been worth the $2B investment. I remain skeptical that a state of the art arena, at that cost, will be worth it.
 
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FfldCntyFan said:
This may well be true but the solution would be a new 12,500 seat arena on campus, not a new 16,000 seat arena in downtown Hartford.

A major part of the solution is for Hartford to find a means of increasing foot traffic that does not involve UConn sporting events.
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As far as a New arena on campus there would need to be a major infrastructure improvement. Additional traffic will make getting there and parking even more problematic. I would like it though.
 
Deepster said:
Check your facts. Hartford didn't support the Whalers for a long time. From 91 to 95 they were bottom 3 in NHL attendance. In 93/94, they trailed only
Ottawa in attendance and only bumped it up their final year in a toothless attempt to keep a team that was already gone.
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Yet they outdrew the Bruins in the mid 80's. Chicago was dead last in attendance 6 years ago and now they're 1st. Winning cures all. Saying fans didn't support the Whalers is ignorant.
 
As a person who loves cities and mixed use activity, Hartford frankly sucks. It has none of the energy that cities that are coming up fast have. (New Haven - for instance; Providence for sure)

Would a $500m Sports centered development change things? I have not seen that the City has any idea how to create the great things that are going on elsewhere or even aligning with groups that do that well. Look at the LWLP program at the old Coliseum site in NH. Transformative. I have little confidence that Hartford will ever pull that together. I see political crap and same ol'. The history across many US cities is about graft & corruption often. The answer is a Residential Walkable city focused on a demand driver like a large medical center (Yale New Haven again) or an urban University. With great dining and entertainment.

The University and your $2B? That, my friends, is the economic engine that could raise the entire state. Good things are happening and accelerating. Herbst may be the most important component of the State. And, like the dynamo she is, UConn Hartford & UConn Medical & UConn Stamford & UConn Law all are benefiting. Somewhere I am hearing a fan talk about the Marxist Liberal agenda of Universities (or the Scott Walker attempt to degrade the University of Wisconsin to just Vocational training). It's not. Higher Ed is where the dollars should be spent.
 
FartMan69 said:
Yet they outdrew the Bruins in the mid 80's. Chicago was dead last in attendance 6 years ago and now they're 1st. Winning cures all. Saying fans didn't support the Whalers is ignorant.
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82/83: Bruins were 11th, Whalers were 19th out of 21 teams.
83/84: Bruins were 15th, Whalers were 18th.
84/85: Bruins were 15th, Whalers were 19th.
85/86: Whalers were 15th, Bruins were 18th
86/87: Whalers were 13th, Bruins were 18th
87/88: Whalers were 13th, Bruins were 16th
88/89: Bruins were 16th, Whalers were 18th

And then the bottom completely fell out of the Whalers fan base. They latched onto a winning bandwagon for a couple years and flamed right out of town. Boston and Chicago are in the original 6. To even mention Whaler attendance with either franchise is ridiculous.
 
Deepster said:
82/83: Bruins were 11th, Whalers were 19th out of 21 teams.
83/84: Bruins were 15th, Whalers were 18th.
84/85: Bruins were 15th, Whalers were 19th.
85/86: Whalers were 15th, Bruins were 18th
86/87: Whalers were 13th, Bruins were 18th
87/88: Whalers were 13th, Bruins were 16th
88/89: Bruins were 16th, Whalers were 18th

And then the bottom completely fell out of the Whalers fan base. They latched onto a winning bandwagon for a couple years and flamed right out of town. Boston and Chicago are in the original 6. To even mention Whaler attendance with either franchise is ridiculous.
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Are you a Bruins fan??
 
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So the Whalers drew well the few years they were good and not so well when they stunk. Makes sense. They had the worst ownership in sports when Gordon owned them.
 
Deepster said:
82/83: Bruins were 11th, Whalers were 19th out of 21 teams.
83/84: Bruins were 15th, Whalers were 18th.
84/85: Bruins were 15th, Whalers were 19th.
85/86: Whalers were 15th, Bruins were 18th
86/87: Whalers were 13th, Bruins were 18th
87/88: Whalers were 13th, Bruins were 16th
88/89: Bruins were 16th, Whalers were 18th

And then the bottom completely fell out of the Whalers fan base. They latched onto a winning bandwagon for a couple years and flamed right out of town. Boston and Chicago are in the original 6. To even mention Whaler attendance with either franchise is ridiculous.
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If anything comparing them strengthens my point. Even OG6 fan bases don't show up for losers. We had a fan base that was young and had seen star after star traded or let go. Should the Penguins have moved in the early 2000's? How about moving the Isles and Devils out of the NY area? This is the largest market without a pro franchise and no ownership took advantage of that. With today's revenue sharing and salary cap a team could definitely work with the right people in place.
 
Pudge said:
As a person who loves cities and mixed use activity, Hartford frankly sucks. It has none of the energy that cities that are coming up fast have. (New Haven - for instance; Providence for sure)

Would a $500m Sports centered development change things? I have not seen that the City has any idea how to create the great things that are going on elsewhere or even aligning with groups that do that well. Look at the LWLP program at the old Coliseum site in NH. Transformative. I have little confidence that Hartford will ever pull that together. I see political crap and same ol'. The history across many US cities is about graft & corruption often. The answer is a Residential Walkable city focused on a demand driver like a large medical center (Yale New Haven again) or an urban University. With great dining and entertainment.
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If one could role back the clock, Connecticut should have established one major city instead of 3 mid-major cities (Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport), likely New haven would be it as its centrally located (east west) no too close to one of the borders and can still be linked by rail to New York. The state is too small in terms of populations and resources to support 3 mid-majors and a host of secondary cities (New Britain, New London, Waterbury, Norwalk, Stamford). A 'super' New Haven with East Haven, West Haven, and most of Hamden added to it would have the people and resources to rival Boston and there would be no question on it hosting major sport teams. All well.

New Haven was (and parts still are) a mess in the late 80's and most of the '90s'. The big change happened when Yale realized that it could not live behind its Ivy walls while the city fell apart and expect to survive. Thus, it partnered with New Haven and over the 20 years has truly transformed downtown. Hartford's downfall is that its downtown was built for business and only business so when globalization pulled many of the company's big corporate partners out of the city before the urban trend to pull residential dwelling back into the urban core in the 2000's. Corporations can move with relative ease. Universities can't.

PS - Providence is a lot like New Haven. Really nice downtown and up on Federal Hill and College Hill (Brown); but, parts are a mess, such as the neighborhood around Providence College.
 
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I can tell you that the City of New Haven fears the power that Yale exerts. Having said that, this creates a unique opportunity for third party private developers. New Haven has gone through a recent period of swinging for the fences ... And I think they've got an interesting mix.

It doesn't hurt to be a mid-sized city where the Medical Center can grow to one of the largest & most important in the world. That has attracted great Capital.
 
BUT. the staff of the med center has deteriorated in past few years. The reason I've heard is the predictable: who wants to live in NH vs other (Ivy League) towns???
 
sledog said:
BUT. the staff of the med center has deteriorated in past few years. The reason I've heard is the predictable: who wants to live in NH vs other (Ivy League) towns???
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If that statement was from 20 years ago, I would not be surprised. Today, after all the money that Yale and others have put into downtown New Haven, it would fin that surprising. Not everyone will want to work in the middle of nowhere (Cornell, Dartmouth) or wants/afford a major city (Penn, Columbia, Harvard), while Princeton is a great small college town, it has no medical school. That leaves Brown and Yale as the Ivies in a midsize city that allows for a slower pace at a much lower cost, compared to Boston and NYC respectively, and still provides world class education.
 
Deepster said:
Check your facts. Hartford didn't support the Whalers for a long time. From 91 to 95 they were bottom 3 in NHL attendance. In 93/94, they trailed only
Ottawa in attendance and only bumped it up their final year in a toothless attempt to keep a team that was already gone.
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The Whalers won one play off series in their NHL existence in Hartford. ONE!! They still averaged close to 14,000 a game in their last season. That is phenomenal support for a crappy product.

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Palatine said:
The Whalers won one play off series in their NHL existence in Hartford. ONE!! They still averaged close to 14,000 a game in their last season. That is phenomenal support for a crappy product.

image_att_graph.php
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Also Karmanos refused to count the skybox's in the attendance numbers. No franchise had a worst string of ownership than the Whale.
 
Palatine said:
The Whalers won one play off series in their NHL existence in Hartford. ONE!! They still averaged close to 14,000 a game in their last season. That is phenomenal support for a crappy product.
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And we threw them a parade. They are the Syracuse t shirt of hockey.


Problem was 1/2 the crowd were b's and ranger fans at heart
 
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This might come as news but this market doesn't support bad teams.

You couldn't fill the HCC with the crowds that saw the end of the season at Rentschler.

The NHL isn't coming back so it's not worth worrying about but it's a better market than some cities that have teams. Not a ton of them, but some.
 
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whaler11 said:
This might come as news but this market doesn't support bad teams.

This is the UConn football board right? You couldn't fill the HCC with the crowds that saw the end of the season at Rentschler.

The NHL isn't coming back so it's not worth worrying about but it's a better market than some cities that have teams. Not a ton of them, but some.
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Nah this is the basketball board but but not supporting a bad team isn't exclusive to this market. Name a team and they've had bad stretches of attendance at some point in time.
 
FartMan69 said:
Nah this is the basketball board but but not supporting a bad team isn't exclusive to this market. Name a team and they've had bad stretches of attendance at some point in time.
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It let me edit my misstep. Thx.

It isn't exclusive to this market... but we are severe and a bit ahead of the curve. Today people seem to understand it better but that general acceptance is newer.
 
Forgot where I saw it in this thread, but yes, the arena should be near the convention center. In fact, it should BE the convention center. That center was a mistake. The arena should have been built there, or at least an arena/convention center one on top of the other, akin to MSG's arena/theater setup. The parking garage next door is fine, but could have added a few extra levels to accommodate arena parking. And the proximity to the highway is perfect.
 
MattMang23 said:
Forgot where I saw it in this thread, but yes, the arena should be near the convention center. In fact, it should BE the convention center. That center was a mistake. The arena should have been built there, or at least an arena/convention center one on top of the other, akin to MSG's arena/theater setup. The parking garage next door is fine, but could have added a few extra levels to accommodate arena parking. And the proximity to the highway is perfect.
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I wouldn't call the convention center a mistake. Its been successful in bringing people to the city and sparking development in the Adrian's Landing area.

The original plan included the NFL stadium Kraft "considered" so no one is going to disagree that the location is ideal, just the timing has passed. The two options i see possible downtown other than the current location is in the downtown north area that broke ground yesterday or near the capital building where there is an abundance of parking lots. A third option may be corner of Morgan and main, where dirt lot and a parking garage sit.
 
Hartford would be much better off investing in the burying of 84 and 91 than in sponsoring an elaborate arena. At least with 84 they actually have a chance to do it and they'll blow it.
 
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