Possible use for the $20 Million- campus stadium anyone?

[pj]

Have you ever done traffic counting? It's worse than watching grass grow

I plan to lay down one of those pneumatic tubes on the street and head to the donut shop.

 

[Dann]

or #43 here

I suspect a lot people have though about Horsebarn Hill as a possible stadium location. If you know the campus, it just makes sense.

dammit! now your going to make me dig more to find a old rant thread when i wanted to blow up 195 and put a turf field and also move the swim team to mirror lol. that wa sa solid rant on my part...

 

[Dann]

UConn cannot sell what is not theirs. The Rent is owned by the state. The school would see zero proceeds from any sale and the state will not support an on campus facility while the Rent is still viable.

the state will sell it and make $ off the sale. then reinvest it into uconn football what they make form the sale. its seen as a win becuase a mls team and the new mall and is now in hartford...

 

[junglehusky]

Who is going to buy it from the state? The MLS team? I don't think so - they are going to want the state to build them a ~20,000 seat facility like, oh, I don't know, the Columbus Crew Stadium, The Houston Dynamo stadium, the FC Dallas stadium, the Montreal Impact stadium, the Home Depot Center, Red Bull Arena, the new Colorado Rapids stadium, the Philly Union stadium, the Real Salt Lake stadium... It's not like there isn't a precedent. If Hartford gets an MLS franchise or one moves here, they will use the Rent as a temporary home while they get the state to build them their soccer specific home.

Besides, MLS's modus operandi has been to select expansion locations based on them demonstrating a market / fanbase before even putting the club there. Seattle, Montreal, Portland, Philly all had Tier II soccer franchises with good support before they got selected. Supposedly Orlando FC is next, unless the NY Cosmos jumps ahead of them.


So if you really want this to happen dan, you'd better get busy attracting a minor league soccer club to Hartford, and building up a season ticket base. 10k minimum, but maybe more like 15k. IMHO we'd be better off getting 10,000 more UConn season ticket holders, but why do it the easy way when you can do a much more complex plan that has even less chance of working? But even if the stupid MLS plan works and thanks to your efforts we get a MLS team, they're not going to want to play in the Rent, and they're certainly not going to "buy it" from the state.

 

[Dann]

Who is going to buy it from the state? The MLS team? I don't think so - they are going to want the state to build them a ~20,000 seat facility like, oh, I don't know, the Columbus Crew Stadium, The Houston Dynamo stadium, the FC Dallas stadium, the Montreal Impact stadium, the Home Depot Center, Red Bull Arena, the new Colorado Rapids stadium, the Philly Union stadium, the Real Salt Lake stadium... It's not like there isn't a precedent. If Hartford gets an MLS franchise or one moves here, they will use the Rent as a temporary home while they get the state to build them their soccer specific home.

Besides, MLS's modus operandi has been to select expansion locations based on them demonstrating a market / fanbase before even putting the club there. Seattle, Montreal, Portland, Philly all had Tier II soccer franchises with good support before they got selected. Supposedly Orlando FC is next, unless the NY Cosmos jumps ahead of them.


So if you really want this to happen dan, you'd better get busy attracting a minor league soccer club to Hartford, and building up a season ticket base. 10k minimum, but maybe more like 15k. IMHO we'd be better off getting 10,000 more UConn season ticket holders, but why do it the easy way when you can do a much more complex plan that has even less chance of working? But even if the stupid MLS plan works and thanks to your efforts we get a MLS team, they're not going to want to play in the Rent, and they're certainly not going to "buy it" from the state.

how long is the mls schedule. any clue? i know they start in the spring and play till early fall iw ant to say? but im not sure. we should get a club now and just work the schedule out with uconn football and then in 2018 when the naming rights thing comes up sell the sadium....that would be the idela way to do it imho. build a 10 to 15k season tix base and build that malla nd ets places in the rent parking lot. mkae the area a nice place and w/e. then sell it.... heck if 40k is to big they can knock down certain spots. i mean the corners on the open endzone can go and the oother endzone 2nd level doesn't need to eb there....or the 2nd deck opposite the press box. they have options if its to big...

 

[junglehusky]

MLS just kicked off this past weekend. I think the regular season runs through October-ish, MLS cup playoffs last year went through november.

Just for the record, Mr. I'm-a-frucking-genius-compared-to-Manuel, should we concentrate our efforts on the long-shot 10-15k season tickets for the MLS franchise, for which there is no potential owner, and no current franchise looking to relocate, and zero interest from MLS with orlando and the Cosmos on the docket and probably a few other places, or should we maybe concentrate on (oh gee I don't know) selling UConn season tickets? Because the way I see it, one is a waste of time, and the other has tangible benefits for potential conference realignment. I'm talking about 2013, 2015. If you want to talk about a 500 billion dollar federal stimulus package that Blumental and Murphy can break a piece off for an extension of I384 to get built 25 years from now, that's a different conversation. It's also a hypothetical conversation. I can make up hypothetical situations where we move the entire main campus to Hartford or Stamford, but those would be just as much of a waste of time.

 

[Dann]

i want to do both. but u seem to be thinking its not possibel which is part of the probelm. no one wants to tackle hard things to do...join the warde and weyvu club.

 

[businesslawyer]

I hate the fact how Malloy is trying to improve the quality of Hartford at the expense of uconn sports. If their going to make all this money from uconn sporting events in hartford at least tear down the XL center and make a newer more modern version of what an arena should look like.

We have a governor who is trying to improve the quality of life in the state's Capitol city? The bastard.

 

[jdb50]

Still waiting for the original "Top Secret" plans for Rent expansion to see the light of day. This would be what I would use the money for. Otherwise it will be pissed away and we will have nothing to show for it when it's gone!

 

[CTMike]

I hate the fact how Malloy is trying to improve the quality of Hartford at the expense of uconn sports. If their going to make all this money from uconn sporting events in hartford at least tear down the XL center and make a newer more modern version of what an arena should look like.

Not sure how this is on Malloy when UConn has been playing in Hartford for how many years?

 

[J187Money]

All you would really have to do is spend 8M a year or whatever it would cost to hire Urban Meyer or Nick Saban or Les Miles or the equivalent and you would fill the stadium. If that isn't happening we are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars? Ok.

 

[ZooCougar]

But... aren't you supposed to be a conservative? Highway building and infrastructure is like straight out of Obama's '08 campaign platform. Obama bad! Highway bad!

Too bad he didn't follow through.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

Because the B1G might make delivering on that plan a condition of membership.

OK, so let's get to it. Stop thinking small Connecticut! Take a look a the rest of the country not called New England.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

yes. more like 6 highways. get some shovels.

-7 to 84
-25 to 84
-11 to the 395/95 split
-384 along 6 all the way to 395
-384 along 44 to storrs and up 195 to 84 and above that to 140 all the way to bradley and down to the new 6 highway from storrs
-44 on the other side of hartford all the way to the top of rt8

These things all should have been in place years ago. Stop thinking provincial Connecticut. Look beyond New England, there is an exciting world out there.

 

[junglehusky]

i want to do both. but u seem to be thinking its not possibel which is part of the probelm. no one wants to tackle hard things to do...join the warde and weyvu club.

One is a project that is in our budget and can be done in ~3 years. The other one is a 30+ year project involving billions of dollars in federal infrastructure before it's even feasible. And since this involves the state it would have to come from the governor, not the UConn AD. I'm not saying it can't be done, or that it isn't worth thinking about as a long term goal for the state. I'm saying your goals of devoting state resources and political capital to this project in time for a B1G invite in ~2 years is crazily unrealistic and amateur hour, the very thing you accuse the athletic department of. Delany would see through this plan in a minute, he knows it would take decades before it could happen. We'd be better off showing off the plans for the Rent expansion and put in a line in the end of the presentation about it lasting 50 years at which time it could be replaced by an on campus stadium if we can get a highway built. duck*, we haven't even replaced the XL center yet, that should be priority #1 for the state (#1 in terms of sports / entertainment venues, that is).

 

[Husky25]

the state will sell it and make $ off the sale. then reinvest it into uconn football what they make form the sale. its seen as a win becuase a mls team and the new mall and is now in hartford...

What ever money they make off a sale would gointo the State's General Fund. It would have no direct impact on UConn.