XL Center vs UCONN

[UConn07]

http://www.howlings.net/2014/04/27/cantlons-corner-xl-center-renovations-and-a-new-building/

"One thing that has changed, at least temporarily, is there are only three locker rooms being planned, one each for the Wolf Pack, the UConn Men’s basketball team and one for the UConn Women’s basketball team.

Weren’t there plans for a locker room for UConn hockey? Afterall, the team is scheduled to enter in the Hockey East conference October. That would seem to be cutting it a bit close. “We’re currently evaluating doing a fourth locker room,” remarked Saint. Could the issue stem from a UConn hockey lease?

“No lease contract has been signed. We are going to one lease for all three teams and they have been a little busy lately. Other than that I can’t discuss those negotiations right now,” Freimuth said regarding the celebrations over the two Division I NCAA Basketball titles won. Not exactly a directly answer to the question."

 

[FDNY99]

There have been rumors of WM and Herbst not caving in to hartford and the XL Center anymore. You saw it worth the quotes Herbst made when UCONN was trying to find a spot downtown for the new Hartford Branch campus..I think it was something to the effect of "I'm going to do what's best for UCONN...not what's best for the City of Hartford. The days of UCONN catering to the City of Hartford are over"...and Manuel took a similar tactic when he decided to look at scheduling men's and women's hoops games in Bridgeport. The thing with the extra hockey games in Bridgeport is just another chapter in this story. I think the story about the size of Gampel is well known by now...how politicians from the City of Hartford were able to get a cap on the size (my cousins husband was one of the architect's for Gampel Pavilion...he said they were contracted to come up with 2 sets of plans..1 set was how it was built...the other set had hydraulic jacks set into the walls that would have raised the roof and allowed for expansion of roughly 2x it's size. The second building option was easily affordable at the time), and there was solid contract language in UCONN's lease that they could ONLY play games at the XL Center or at Gampel...nowhere else in the state. I would LOVE to see the day where ALL athletic events are played on Campus....but I know a 65,000-70,000 seat football stadium on campus stadium is just a pipe dream. So I'll settle instead for hockey and basketball!!!!!