Audit: Downtown North costs exceed $102M (CT minor league stadium)

Hartford Business Journal ^ | August 26, 2016 | Patricia Daddona

[George from New England]

I commented to the wife the other day ...

Remember the January bridal show (circa 1992) when our family van got broken into ... it was parked in an open air lot where they built this incomplete stadium !!

Great neighborhood then — and always.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Though here in Pittsburgh I must say....even though they ignored our ballots and used taxpayer money to build it....PNC Park has managed to do the impossible and cleaned-up Federal Street.

Before the park it was a no-man’s land of junkies, winos, flophouses and porno theaters.

[Ray76]

Because hartford is known as a rail hub. /s

[Gil4]

and again... why can’t they play at UConn?

I doubt that stadium can be configured for baseball. The multi-purpose stadiums usually have seating that can be pulled out for football and stowed for baseball, but the UConn stadium has fixed seating all the way around.

[Psalm 73]

"Cause NOTHING appeals to that crowd like AA Baseball! Moron!!"

But he's the owner of a sports franchise. And a brand new sports facility in a large northeast city.

(Hey, wait a minute - that "Moron" wasn't directed at me was it? Not that it matters....)

[Buckeye McFrog]

Nope, clearly moron was directed at this owner.
Sorry I was not more precise!!

[DoughtyOne]

A lot of people toss around the term Crony Capitalism.  IMO, this is clear evidence of it.  I'm not against some zoning accomodations, but teams need to build their own stadiums.

The taxpayer's part is to attend games if they want to.


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[kearnyirish2]

You’re right; Newark NJ did this and they couldn’t sell tickets. The gibsmedats complained they didn’t want jobs selling popcorn and the white people never showed up anyway; now the “new” stadium is abandoned and overgrown...

[kearnyirish2]

Newark NJ has a stadium without a team; the Newark Bears could never sell many tickets (white people know better than to remain in Newark after the sun goes down) so they folded.

[riverdawg]

The Braves made a mistake by renovating the Olympic stadium into the “new” Turner Field. The area was a ghetto then, 20 years ago, with no public transportation to the site, and the Braves and Fulton County had no comprehensive plan to revitalize the surrounding area. The trend has been to locate new stadiums in the urban core where many young people and retirees want to live and where there is existing public transportation infrastructure. The Braves should have tried to partner with the city of Atlanta to build their new stadium near the new Falcons stadium. Maybe they did and failed. The Cobb County location will be a traffic nightmare.

[dangus]

Meh... that’s largely about keeping fans close to the action. To get a respectable distance down the right-field line, they would have to clear out a section of field-level seats. Or probably better, clear out some of that section, plus a section of seating near on the corner where the end zone meets the sides and use that section for the area behind home plate.

[dangus]

>> Nobody is going to drive into Hartford for a baseball game. <<

UConn’s stadium is actually in East Hartford, with a dedicated exit off of I-84/US-6. The complaint, rather, is that the crowd it will draw won’t do anything for local businesses.

[campaignPete R-CT]

a few notes:
the city owns the ballpark. Financed by bonds.

the difference here is that it is an unfinished boondoggle with no certain opening date and no certain team and no certain fan base.

This project is more entertaining than minor league baseball.

yes, traffic and parking nightmare. which will subside as the crowds diminish

[riverdawg]

Sounds similar to the saga in Tampa FL a couple of decades ago, when the city built a new stadium to try to lure the Chigago White Sox, who were still playing in old Cominsky Park. The White Sox used the Tampa offer to get the new stadium in Chicago built, and Tampa was left with an empty ballpark for the better part of a decade.

[kearnyirish2]

Check out the Xanadu/American Dream Mall/Entertainment Center/Theme Park in the NJ Meadowlands; it is a huge mall built years ago (including an indoor ski slope) that never opened. Huge, ugly, and basically abandoned...

[DoughtyOne]

LOL, thanks for the update.

[raccoonradio]

Indeed re: the goat. Here's the logo of the old New York, New Haven and Hartford railraod (below) which helped inspire the logo of the team

[dangus]

Amazingly, if you take a 30-mile radius around the city, the population is 2.1 million. That compares favorably to Portland, Ore (2.01), Cincinnati (1.85), Milwaukee (1.79), Orlando (1.78), Kansas City (1.73), San Antonio (1.68), Charlotte (1.53), Indianapolis (1.52), Columbus (1.50), or New Orleans (1.24).

Further, the population density doesn’t drop off as you expand outwards nearly as fast in Hartford as it does in those cities because of the proximity of New Haven, Bridgeport, Springfield-Holyoke, etc.; The population within 45 miles is 3.54 million.

In other words, Hartford is MAJOR-LEAGUE type population. Not saying that they should try for a MLB team, just that their failure to keep an AA team is a pathetic joke.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Partner with the city of Atlanta? And get the old Kasim Reed shakedown?

[riverdawg]

Good point. What was I thinking?