OT: New Retail at The Rent

[junglehusky]

See??? It's so easy!

 

[CTMike]

The numbers being thrown around are laughably small... No offense guys.

HFD... Gotta let it go man. How do we make The Rent work where it is. Some good ideas in this thread, along with the usual "expand it". Campus football stadium is not in our lifetimes. Gampel, XL Center, Freitas are all in front of The Rent in terms of looking for a replacement. Bring campus to The Rent.

 

[thatguyed]

Would love to see it all move to Storrs but, yeah, ain't gonna happen. If there are ways to take advantage of the acreage around the Rent, you have to do it. It will help on game days (restaurants and services, improved access and traffic patterns, etc.) and anything in general that'll boost the economy has to be considered.

 

[Jarhead_1775]

The numbers being thrown around are laughably small... No offense guys.

HFD... Gotta let it go man. How do we make The Rent work where it is. Some good ideas in this thread, along with the usual "expand it". Campus football stadium is not in our lifetimes. Gampel, XL Center, Freitas are all in front of The Rent in terms of looking for a replacement. Bring campus to The Rent.

No I specifically disclaimed any knowledge of realistic numbers. I was just throwing stuff out there. Doesn't matter anyway it is NOT happening.

 

[SubbaBub]

The numbers being thrown around are laughably small... No offense guys.

HFD... Gotta let it go man. How do we make The Rent work where it is. Some good ideas in this thread, along with the usual "expand it". Campus football stadium is not in our lifetimes. Gampel, XL Center, Freitas are all in front of The Rent in terms of looking for a replacement. Bring campus to The Rent.

Move the campus to East Hartford. (Still kidding, but not completely)

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[CTMike]

Move the campus to East Hartford. (Still kidding, but not completely)

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If you are talking Hartford branch- absolutely. Anything is better than the ol Husky High in West Hartford. Storrs will always be main campus.

 

[BoatShow]

How about fill the dozen or so empty retail places on Silver Lane first.

 

[MarbleheadHusky]

Guys, this has been the plan for years. It was part of the original deal with UT for the Rent. It's why all the parking has been migrating east all these years.

It's a testament to the developers horrible execution that it hasn't been built yet.

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This is exactly correct.

When I was working on the construction at Patriot Place (GC) back in 2006-2007, I had to find some documents on Arrowstreet's (Architect) FTP site. I came across a folder for Rentschler Field and took a look. There were a lot of architectural 3d models and sketches showing a stadium surrounded by a very large retail developement. The downturn in the economy is the only thing that has kept this construction from starting. Cabela's, like Bass Pro Shop is the anchor. As someone else said, they have been moving around parking lots for a while now, gettting ready for this development. Still love the old Purple Lot, which was my favorite.

 

[UConnJim]

Have any of you been to Patriot Place? Gillette Stadium is a much better environment due to Patriot Place. People go to the restaurants, the Pats store, stay in the hotel before and after the game. The Pats store and Hall of Fame are year around attractions. Movie theaters are good. And, there is still plenty of room to tailgate, etc. Plus, Foxboro has many more concerts, football games, soccer games,... than the Rent. Go to Bass Pro Shop at least 2x per year.

I'm all for developing the area around the Rent.

 

[Bill Sussman]

Have any of you been to Patriot Place? Gillette Stadium is a much better environment due to Patriot Place. People go to the restaurants, the Pats store, stay in the hotel before and after the game. The Pats store and Hall of Fame are year around attractions. Movie theaters are good. And, there is still plenty of room to tailgate, etc. Plus, Foxboro has many more concerts, football games, soccer games,... than the Rent. Go to Bass Pro Shop at least 2x per year.

I'm all for developing the area around the Rent.

As a Jets fan. Gillette sucks as a football venue and is imposible to get in and out of.

As an economic development plan, sure I am open to the idea in East Hartford. Would be nice to leave room for XL replacement and have a consolidated sports area ala Philly but that may just be a dream.

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

the state is trying to kill our program before CR can. this is a frucking football field and tailgate lot, not some pretty frucking mall setup with a fball field in the parking lot. chesus. knock the place down and lets build one on campus next to dts somewhere. then lets get a 15 k bball arena and a puck barn in there also. fruck this state and its idiot leftie leaders.

Yeah, remember that time the Patriots built retail around Foxboro and it destroyed the fan base?

Me neither.

 

[Ronpatz11]

Yeah, remember that time the Patriots built retail around Foxboro and it destroyed the fan base?

Me neither.

Patriots Place has been quit the windfall for both the Kraft family and the fan base. As a season ticket holder, it has accomplished two things.
1. Turned the game-day experience into a weekend experience.
2. Brought excitement and fans to the area year round, even when events aren't going on.

The Patriots, wisely, built a great Hall of Fame and Fan Experience as a part of Patriot Place. It is a great way for fans to go back on non-game days and enjoy being a Patriots fan (any team can do the same with their fanbase). It allows parents to take young children and "train" them to love the team. Just a great experience as a fan and one that has enriched the greater experience. UConn should seriously consider doing the same. How cool would a room be with jerseys from every NFL player in UConn history? Trophy's from bowl games? Pictures and video from big wins? Take RECRUITS to the stadium, dinner at the Yard House next door and a tour through the Husky Fan Experience.

HFD- You complain that we don't have an on-campus atmosphere with our stadium. However, your ideas of building a stadium in Storrs, with the infrastructure difficulties there and the fact that we've already built a 100+mm stadium, is unrealistic.

THIS is the best option we have to create that environment. When alums come back for Alumni Weekend, or any other game, what engagement do they have? They drive to the Rent day of the game, tailgate in the parking lot for a couple hours and go to the game. End of day.

Wouldn't it be a significantly better experience for the whole weekend to have lodging, bars and entertainment as a part of the Rent experience? Alums could fly in to Bradley on a Friday night, be checked into their hotel with all their buddies and at the bar within an hour. That's an experience I'd love to see for the Rent, one that will only improve the entire experience.

Keep throwing out unrealistic ideas. This is reality and one that has great potential to enrich the entire experience and build a whole new legion of fans.

 

[Jarhead_1775]

How about fill the dozen or so empty retail places on Silver Lane first.

Like most towns there are a few old codgers on the town zoning board in East Hartford that are still under the delusion that the town is still a blue collar Pratt employee town. Truth is it's far from that and they're clinging to the old farm and worker community utopia they had when they were kids. So they shoot down plan after plan because it doesn't fit in their profile.

 

[uconnfan68]

if we can knock all of hartford down, then we can move storrs there and uconn can be in the center of the state. i see that as a better investment then the billions for a try at aau. i mean every crack heads paper box to the office buildings. completely knock hartford down. start from scratch. if i ever get rrich, after i buy butch a hous ein colorado, im going to level that city and move uconn there becuase its leaders can't figure it out. we need 1 campus with 1 huge set up. not 15 little set ups. the whole state sytem of colleges needs to be redone becuase it was all done wrong years ago.

After you knock down Hartford, fix that road through the middle of it.

 

[UConnJim]

As a Jets fan. Gillette sucks as a football venue and is imposible to get in and out of.

As an economic development plan, sure I am open to the idea in East Hartford. Would be nice to leave room for XL replacement and have a consolidated sports area ala Philly but that may just be a dream.

When they built Gillette Stadium, they also included a new entrance and exit from the stadium for high roller season ticket holders. No more traffic problems for them.

 

[Sean]

+100, Ronpatz...

If UConn wasn't planning this, it's the type of idea that Dan would be suggesting, if he were able to still give positive suggestions at this point. The success all comes down to the execution, though, which we unfortunately don't have much reason to have faith in. A UConn themed bar, a hotel, and a couple of reasonable shops would start to make the place feel like a sub-UConn campus, instead of a stadium plopped perfectly between a bunch of highways.

Also, Dan - for all of your complaining, you keep saying that we've screwed up royally in the past 30 years. If you really want to complain about an on-campus stadium or lack therof, you really need to go back to whenever 84, 91, etc were built, and blame whoever decided to put UConn where it is. Of course, at the time, it was thought of more as an agricultural school, so kind of tough to really blame anyone here.

 

[dsturdy5]

As a Jets fan. Gillette sucks as a football venue and is imposible to get in and out of.

As an economic development plan, sure I am open to the idea in East Hartford. Would be nice to leave room for XL replacement and have a consolidated sports area ala Philly but that may just be a dream.

Did you go to the old stadium? Getting out of Gillette is a piece of cake compared to that. Besides, I prefer to park about a mile down the road and walk. It is better than sitting in that traffic. Quick right turn out of the lot and I'm on the highway in minutes.

 

[junglehusky]

Yup, more like 120 years. You'd have to go back to 1880 and tell the Storrs Brothers (warning - epic run-on sentence) "Hey guys, thanks for your donation of land and money to fund an ag school, but you see in a few years Queens College and Princeton are going to start playing this game called football, and 120 years from now the school is going to have a football team that needs a 60,000 capacity stadium, but 70 years from now they'll start building a highway from Hartford to Providence that will run out of money so it won't reach your land in Mansfield, and oh by the way there will be these things called horseless carriages that travel on the highways, but since the land you're donating now will not wind up close to the highway, it'll be too hard for the 60,000 people to drive their horseless carriages to the football stadium, so why don't you sell the land, and donate the profits to the State so we can buy some land in Stamford even though it doesn't make much sense to build an ag school there, but it is located closer to New York and when they invent these things called televisions that allow people to watch the football games it'll really help out the school because the government will consider Stamford to be part of the New York television market, and then the school will be able to make lots of income by being invited into a league with a bunch of midwestern schools, ahead of Queens college, which will be renamed Rutgers university."

 

[HuskyBlue08]

If they could replicate Patriots Place in East Hartford it would be perfect. I love Patriots Place.

I have have gone for a nightcap at CBS Scene, Bar Louie, or Toby Keith's at every Gillette event that I have attended over the last 4 or 5 years.

I usually head to Wild Wings or something after UConn games too... only problem is everything is Manchester. Could really use something that is walking distance from the stadium.

 

[ZooCougar]

the state is trying to kill our program before CR can. this is a frucking football field and tailgate lot, not some pretty frucking mall setup with a fball field in the parking lot. chesus. knock the place down and lets build one on campus next to dts somewhere. then lets get a 15 k bball arena and a puck barn in there also. fruck this state and its idiot leftie leaders.


i beg to know why we can't just have nice normal things like the rest of the big boys. its just amazing how many ppl want to ruin this school over and over again so it never becomes a big boy. is cabelas a cool store? sure, but i dont frucking want it within 2 miles of my cheeseburger and tailgate.

)*@*)+$&!$+))+~)$*)~*~FUC#*#*#*$+@*$+~*$+

Negative.

You should see what other cities are doing in this area. In Kansas City they have the outdoor shopping mall, next to the NASCAR track, the MLS Sporting KC Stadium, a minor league baseball stadium, Cabela's, Nebraska Furniture etc.. All within walking distance.

It's great, you can have dinner at a gourmet restaurant and then walk across the street and see Sporting KC play.

 

[ZooCougar]

As a Jets fan. Gillette sucks as a football venue and is imposible to get in and out of.

As an economic development plan, sure I am open to the idea in East Hartford. Would be nice to leave room for XL replacement and have a consolidated sports area ala Philly but that may just be a dream.

This is sound thinking. So it probably won't happen.

 

[Bill Sussman]

Did you go to the old stadium? Getting out of Gillette is a piece of cake compared to that. Besides, I prefer to park about a mile down the road and walk. It is better than sitting in that traffic. Quick right turn out of the lot and I'm on the highway in minutes.

Never been to the old stadium but that road is swamped on Gameday. I actually parked at a friends house over a mile away and just tailgated afterwards. Even before you get out of your car, walking down the ramps at Gillette is a pain. Like I said, Patriot Place is impressive but accessibility wise it was the worst stadium I have been to in the NFL (including the Meadowlands, Georgia Dome, University of Phoenix Stadium, Lincoln Financial Field)

 

[Dann]

Negative.

You should see what other cities are doing in this area. In Kansas City they have the outdoor shopping mall, next to the NASCAR track, the MLS Sporting KC Stadium, a minor league baseball stadium, Cabela's, Nebraska Furniture etc.. All within walking distance.

It's great, you can have dinner at a gourmet restaurant and then walk across the street and see Sporting KC play.

i know of all this. i have a great example. the track in dover del used to be off a 6 lane open main rd/highway. it used to have hotels, dive bars and a couple schools along it that were cc levels. one of those schoold is del state. now when u go down there the schools is pretty and 3 times as big, every chain store and shop possible is on the strip and so on. i get all that. but spending $ on this is not in our best interest right now. the b10 isn't adding us becuase we get a wild wings in our stadium parking lot. spening $ on th wrong things right now is like killing the program. the state wouldn't spend this $ unless its already know whwre we are going. but im still not happy with the crappy setup overall.

 

[businesslawyer]

i know of all this. i have a great example. the track in dover del used to be off a 6 lane open main rd/highway. it used to have hotels, dive bars and a couple schools along it that were cc levels. one of those schoold is del state. now when u go down there the schools is pretty and 3 times as big, every chain store and shop possible is on the strip and so on. i get all that. but spending $ on this is not in our best interest right now. the b10 isn't adding us becuase we get a wild wings in our stadium parking lot. spening $ on th wrong things right now is like killing the program. the state wouldn't spend this $ unless its already know whwre we are going. but im still not happy with the crappy setup overall.

The University is not developing the shopping area. The State is, and is doing so because it sees a benefit in doing so.

To say that you are whining just for the sake of whining would be a massive understatement. Nothing in this announcement will have any harm whatsoever on UConn football.

 

[Dann]

The University is not developing the shopping area. The State is, and is doing so because it sees a benefit in doing so.

To say that you are whining just for the sake of whining would be a massive understatement. Nothing in this announcement will have any harm whatsoever on UConn football.

1) it means uconn football is staying in east hartford for the next 100 years

2) dont need it becuase #1 is bad enough.

 

[ZooCougar]

i know of all this. i have a great example. the track in dover del used to be off a 6 lane open main rd/highway. it used to have hotels, dive bars and a couple schools along it that were cc levels. one of those schoold is del state. now when u go down there the schools is pretty and 3 times as big, every chain store and shop possible is on the strip and so on. i get all that. but spending $ on this is not in our best interest right now. the b10 isn't adding us becuase we get a wild wings in our stadium parking lot. spening $ on th wrong things right now is like killing the program. the state wouldn't spend this $ unless its already know whwre we are going. but im still not happy with the crappy setup overall.

The idea isn't to spend money. The idea is to get other businesses to spend money to develop the area.

 

[businesslawyer]

1) it means uconn football is staying in east hartford for the next 100 years

This is not news Sherlock. The Rent was not built as temporary space at an elementary school.

The political support in Hartford that the University needs requires that events occur where the entire state has access to it. And guess what -- the University has developed very successfully over time by making sure that Fairfield County (and to a lesser extent New Haven county) feels more tied to UConn.

 

[Dann]

This is not news Sherlock. The Rent was not built as temporary space at an elementary school.

The political support in Hartford that the University needs requires that events occur where the entire state has access to it. And guess what -- the University has developed very successfully over time by making sure that Fairfield County (and to a lesser extent New Haven county) feels more tied to UConn.

the way u reach ffc is by taking more students and contact alum better thru adds etc. not moving the football field 20 minutes closer. your telling me the hour drive is ok but a hour 20 isn't? a train from ffc take 1 hour give or take to gct every day. i think these folks can handle a hour 20 drive. especially when u tell them instead of going to a airfield with a cabelas and mall around it u can go to campus and spend the day eating in the cafe visiting the kids dorms going to the local bars and so much more.

its so far off culture wise here that we have fans going to the grave with how great hartford is. its scary how u all literally have no freaking clue wtf is up or down. hartford was a great start for fball becuase its in hartford and thats where the dumb asz school played some bball games which is another crime. i can not stress enough how colleges use athletics to mold culture and student/alum bases. we are 99% missing out of that and its showing. u want tv sets? u want more fans with car stickers? u want more fans traveling? anll that stuff? then u have to create and push the culture. we do the opposite, we sell a fake culture of hartford to a fanbase when the schools is in the sticks 20 minutes away. i would rather put in a 1mil hs turf field at the bottom of horse barn hill and make 50k sit there cold asses on it and get dirty every saturday then play another dam fball game at the pos rent. its a nice starter place but ppl here ar eblind if they think its anything special.

plan for the future, not double down on crapy decisions to start with.

 

[CTMike]

Dan, again- it's a non starter. Never happen. Focus your energies on making the Rent better.

 

[CL82]

the way u reach ffc is by taking more students and contact alum better thru adds etc. not moving the football field 20 minutes closer. your telling me the hour drive is ok but a hour 20 isn't? a train from ffc take 1 hour give or take to gct every day. i think these folks can handle a hour 20 drive. especially when u tell them instead of going to a airfield with a cabelas and mall around it u can go to campus and spend the day eating in the cafe visiting the kids dorms going to the local bars and so much more.

its so far off culture wise here that we have fans going to the grave with how great hartford is. its scary how u all literally have no freaking clue wtf is up or down. hartford was a great start for fball becuase its in hartford and thats where the dumb asz school played some bball games which is another crime. i can not stress enough how colleges use athletics to mold culture and student/alum bases. we are 99% missing out of that and its showing. u want tv sets? u want more fans with car stickers? u want more fans traveling? anll that stuff? then u have to create and push the culture. we do the opposite, we sell a fake culture of hartford to a fanbase when the schools is in the sticks 20 minutes away. i would rather put in a 1mil hs turf field at the bottom of horse barn hill and make 50k sit there cold asses on it and get dirty every saturday then play another dam fball game at the pos rent. its a nice starter place but ppl here ar eblind if they think its anything special.

plan for the future, not double down on crapy decisions to start with.

I don't disagree with much of this Dan, but it is what it is. Might as well make the best of it by making the Rent more of a destination (acknowledging that there are limitations to how much can be done.)

On a related note, Horsebarn Hill just cries for stadium, doesn't it? Cue the inevitable traffic comments... I still say, from seeing how traffic is handled at other schools, it is manageable. Use police to enforce one way traffic out of school to speed departures. Use alternative routes, like Gurlyville road to route 6, to spread our cars. It's doable. It won't happen in the foreseeable future but ...oh what might have been.