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Let's Buy The Whalers And Bring Them Back Home
Hartford Courant ^ | Friday, May 5, 2017 | JOHN Q. GALE

Posted on 05/06/2017 8:47:31 AM PDT by Steven Scharf

Hartford Courant Let's Buy The Whalers And Bring Them Back Home Bring Back The Whalers

Hartford city councilman John Q. Gale has proposed a way for the Whalers to come back to Hartford.

By JOHN Q. GALE Friday, May 5, 2017

Forbes Magazine says that the Carolina Hurricanes (our Hartford Whalers) National Hockey League franchise is worth $230 million. As the team has the lowest attendance in the league, this is likely an overstatement, but let's work with it. Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos Jr. said earlier this year that he would entertain offers for his team. What if all 38 towns in the Capitol Region Council of Governments banded together to buy the franchise and brought it back to Hartford?

Of course, interest in the Whalers in the Hartford area never waned and recent talk of the New York Islanders coming to Hartford reignited central Connecticut hockey pride. Reebok notes that Whalers paraphernalia is the their top seller of all non-active teams and Sports Illustrated has ranked the Whalers logo third best of all time.

Hockey pride notwithstanding, central Connecticut is facing a crisis in economic development. Our state and local economies are laggards; we are not growing existing business nor attracting new business. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy may have low approval ratings, but he gets it — regions that have invested in their cities are thriving.

In his budget address, Malloy said, "We've yet to build enough thriving, vibrant city centers — with lower tax rates — where industry and business want to grow. The truth is, other states have had the foresight to make necessary investments in these areas, and as a result they've gained a competitive advantage on us."

Yet, even as these truths become more self-evident, towns in Greater Hartford continue to be reluctant to throw their lot in with the city. Regionalism seems to be a dirty word, instead of our salvation. What if we could provide the region with an identity, a rallying point; what if there were a way to bring back the Whale and give it a built-in metro area base of support; and we did it all by regionally cooperating. Such cooperation would be key; we know that when the Whalers were here, not enough of the region was engaged and ticket sales were not robust enough to keep the team here.

Before you dismiss this as a quixotic dream, here's my plan.

Grand lists are representative of the respective wealth of each town. So, the 38 towns would each pay a portion of the purchase price of the Whalers hockey team based on their percentage of the total grand list of all 38 towns. So, for example, by my calculations, Wethersfield is 3.22 percent of the total and Tolland is 1.79 percent. Wethersfield would then pay $7.41 million toward the purchase price, while Tolland would pay $4.11 million. Looking at all the capital region towns, West Hartford, with the highest grand list, would pay $18.69 million, while Andover, with the lowest grand list, would pay $822,000. On a per capita basis, these four towns range from a low of $252 per person to a high of $296 per person. The average per capita cost for all 38 towns is $274 per person.

That's right, for a one time payment of $274 per person, we could all own the Whalers!

With Connecticut's budget plunging deeper into the red, Hartford's finances teetering and towns across the state warily watching allocations of state aid for the coming year, it might hardly seem the time to spend money buying a professional hockey team. But, even as we struggle to straighten out the fiscal situation, we must have an eye on the long-term economic growth of our region. Judicious investments can yield strong results as we regain our fiscal footing and become that place where industry and business want to grow.

In buying the Whalers, each town would have to decide how to raise its portion of the purchase price. Some might just budget for it in one year, others might bond for it, paying the cost over 20 years at an annual per capita expenditure of about $14. In any case, no particular town is overly burdened. The Capitol Region Council of Governments, or a new regional authority, could be designated to manage the team. Done right, each town would potentially stand to receive distributions from profitable team operations.

Profitable operations require support from the community. Because each town would have a stake in the outcome, one might expect each town, indeed each neighbor, to promote attendance. We would be using our entertainment dollars to invest in ourselves. Beyond any financial concerns, we would be investing in the emotional well-being of our community. We would all be in this together; we could all take pride in our Hartford Whalers. Green Bay, where the Packers NFL football team is publicly owned, would have nothing on us. And in the process, we would have advanced regionalism.

John Q. Gale, a lawyer, is a member of the Hartford City Council.


TOPICS: Government; US: Connecticut
KEYWORDS: connecticut; conneticutt; dumbideas; hartford; hockey; nhl; whalers
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To: BeadCounter
Carolina has definitely been to the playoffs more than twice. They made the playoffs in the following seasons:

1998-99
2000-01
2001-02 (lost in the Stanley Cup finals)
2005-06 (won the Stanley Cup)
2008-09

41 posted on 05/06/2017 3:04:19 PM PDT by Alberta's Child
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To: God luvs America

Didn’t Hartford just spend $60m on a stadium for a AA minor league baseball team? Sheer lunacy.


42 posted on 05/06/2017 5:16:42 PM PDT by riverdawg
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To: Snickering Hound

Saw a great game between Houston and Winnipeg that ended in a tie. The Howes were whisked out of the locker room but Bobby Hull stayed and signed autographs for an hour.


43 posted on 05/06/2017 7:28:25 PM PDT by NTHockey (Rules of engagement #1: Take no prisoners. And to the NSA trolls, FU)
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To: Jim Noble
Here is the fight song: "Brass Bonanza" (Hartford Whalers Fight Song) Here is the fight song: Link: Whalers sucked against everyone else, but played the Bruins tough... (I had to go look up the song you referenced! I had never heard it before...gave me a feel for a better time...:)
44 posted on 05/06/2017 10:36:01 PM PDT by rlmorel (President Donald J. Trump ... Making Liberal Heads Explode, 140 Characters at a Time)
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To: Eddie01
Rasta Mon vibration, yeah,

Got to have a good time.

Ya Mon!

45 posted on 05/06/2017 10:48:37 PM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma Deuce)
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To: riverdawg
Didn’t Hartford just spend $60m on a stadium for a AA minor league baseball team? Sheer lunacy

It's not really lunacy. It's more of a cargo cult.

After leftists destroy a downtown, or a whole city, through demographic transformation, welfare, passive law enforcement, etc., they notice that people don't go there any more.

"Well", they think to themselves, "Well, what do law-abiding people good manners and with money to spend, like? I know, they like baseball!", so, the city fathers build a minor league stadium, or a shopping plaza with an "upscale" store, or any other SWPL amenity.

Some of the more clever ones figure out that the local employed population who have fled can't be fooled, so they build a convention center, where upstanding citizens from out of town can be bussed from the airport right into the hood, without ever knowing where they are going.

Anyway, it always fails. Their heart's in the right place, but their devotion to false beliefs about human nature eventually turns their city into a hellhole.

One of my organizations recently invited me to a convention in St. Louis! Can you imagine?

46 posted on 05/07/2017 4:04:09 AM PDT by Jim Noble (Die Gedanken sind Frei)
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To: Eddie01

These guys aren’t from Hartford. They are from Cos Cob and they support hockey 100%.


47 posted on 05/07/2017 7:26:44 AM PDT by certrtwngnut (Hey snowflake. You want a safe place go to a gun range.)
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To: Alberta's Child

Unfortunately, Houston lost the Aeros a few years ago. Attendance was pretty good for an AHL team, but the Rockets, who hold the master lease at the Toyota Center, wanted a massive rent increase over the already ridiculous rent, and there weren’t any other suitable venues in Houston, so the Wild (who owned the Aeros) had to move the team.

Houston is a huge market, of course, and might be able to support an NHL franchise despite the fact that hockey isn’t really that popular down here. The problem is the Rockets—they control the only NHL-level venue in Houston, and they have the right to exclude any hockey team they don’t own from the arena. To date, they have shown no interest in either owning an NHL franchise or allowing one to use the Toyota Center.

I used to go to Hurricanes games all the time when I lived in Raleigh (and worked for them back in college), and I used to go to Aeros games here in Houston until they left. Now there is no hockey in Houston, and as this article highlights, there may be no hockey in Raleigh soon.


48 posted on 05/08/2017 11:51:53 AM PDT by The Pack Knight
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