Jeff Jacobs
One knows bricks and mortar. The other knows hockey and Hollywood.
They both are supposed to be about what's right for Hartford.
The fact that Larry Gottesdiener and Howard Baldwin have made competing bids to pick through the antiquated bones of the Civic Center is, to be frank, unimpressive. The third bidder is understandable. Madison Square Garden wants to continue operating the building while using it for its minor league hockey franchise. If the Connecticut Development Authority has vision - any at all - it will tell MSG thanks for a decade of work, but now the state is going to try and get back to the future.
That's when the real work has to begin.
Gov. Rell should call Gottesdiener, Baldwin, Mayor Eddie Perez, UConn officials and key legislators to the Capitol to start formulating a far-reaching plan to shape the sporting landscape of our state.
Enough of this competition over an aging building.
Enough of these squabbles over last-minute changes in proposals.
Start working together. Synergy, boys and girls, synergy.
A short-term vs. long-term view of bringing the NHL to Hartford has supposedly set apart Gottesdiener and Baldwin. In reality, it's semantics. It's verbiage. And if you read their words a certain way, it almost sounds as if Gottesdiener is buying more time and Baldwin less time - which is the opposite of the way it has been painted publicly.
The truth is that attracting a major league franchise isn't short-term or long-term. It should be an all-the-time thing. You cannot stage the moment to hook a sports franchise. A team could become available next week or in five years. If you can catch lightning in a bottle, well, thank the sporting gods for the miracle. In the meantime, it should be all about best positioning a market and improving the odds. Kansas City is no better an NHL market than Hartford-New Haven. Heck, I'd argue Connecticut is better in the long run, but K.C. has an arena ready and an organized strategy. There are no guarantees, but K.C., in the parlance, is in the room.
Gottesdiener, downtown's biggest landowner, announced in December 2005 he was going to try to bring the NHL back to Hartford. That's 13 months ago. It's already past short-term. When Gottesdiener took his shot at the Penguins last year, we encouraged him to go for it. He found out soon enough what Hartford's chances were - zilch at that point. Still, his enthusiasm was great and the learning experience for a novice was beneficial.
Now, Larry G. should know there's a shelf life on playing the savior. There's a shelf life on playing the hero.
Gottesdiener is saying he'll soon be talking to two NHL teams and an NBA team about buying them. OK, terrific. Start kicking tires and you get hopes up. You get hopes up and you become publicly accountable if you don't produce.
Gottesdiener wants to knock down the Civic Center, build Rockefeller Center Lite or condos next to his new tower and find another location to build an arena.
Baldwin's early career was as the Johnny Appleseed of hockey. His later career has been as a Hollywood producer.
They have separate strengths that should meld well. One takes the route of a real estate deal. The other takes the route of an entertainment package. It could be a long journey, but for both the route should end with an NHL team and a new arena.
Gottesdiener and Baldwin had lunch in Boston a few weeks ago, and the meeting was said to be cordial. It should be a steppingstone to productive cooperation, not competition.
To expect the CDA to tackle the big picture when their charge was to frame the small picture is asking far too much. Especially when the big picture is an uncertain landscape and costs a half-billion dollars - new arena, NHL franchise, state sports cable network, etc. - and the small-picture decision involves trying to find someone through 2013 to manage a building that's losing $4 million a year.
For the sake of argument, say Gottesdiener did catch lightening in a bottle. Say a chat with an NHL franchise miraculously bore fruit. If he came back to Rell next week and said, "I'll put down the $25 million I promised, and now you've got to come up with $275 million to make this arena a reality," what would happen? Do you think it would be a slam dunk that the General Assembly would immediately approve funding when so many revenue streams would have to go to the NHL product to make it financially viable?
Neither do I. What looked like a miracle could turn into an opportunity blown.
The city is beginning a study of a new arena. There should be a larger task force including city, state, UConn officials and corporate leaders to best understand and give direction to an arena befitting a prosperous state, an arena that was initially supposed to be part of the Adrien's Landing concept. Regardless of whether an NHL franchise is landed, there's eventually going to have to be an arena for UConn basketball - the golden goose of Connecticut. The arena is more than an NHL dream. It's a UConn dream, too. It's a building for the state.
Let's learn from the past. When Pete Karmanos took the Whalers out of Hartford, the key was an arena deal with North Carolina State. If UConn and the Whalers had been better aligned, they could have met on common ground.
And believe this. The NHL won't touch Hartford without a new arena, or at least a substantive directive in place to build it. So why not shoot for, say, 2013 as a back-end target date for a new arena. By that point, the Civic Center would be almost 40 years old - and wouldn't the old barn have given enough bang for our buck? If somehow an NHL team is snagged in the meantime, at least we'd be far enough down the path to react more quickly and more wisely.
At the same time, Baldwin's idea of a state sports network makes sense. NESN, MSG, YES ... that's where the sports energy is today. Yes, some UConn basketball and football games are aired nationally, but the rest could be scooped up and - just as importantly - pregame, postgame and 24/7 coverage could flourish. That network could be in place when a major league affiliate was landed.
This cannot be about ego. This cannot be about inflating hopes and quickly deflating dreams. Folks grow disillusioned. The NHL doesn't have Hartford on its "must" list. If Hartford was Houston, then small minor league crowds wouldn't matter so much. But a market our size looks puny when AHL crowds remain so small. We're a decade out from the Whalers, and the NHL Board of Governors will need to be convinced that Hartford - squeezed by New York and Boston - isn't forever cursed by geography.
All the more reason for a sober, concerted plan to rebuild hockey at the minor league level, while bringing in NHL and NBA exhibitions featuring those UConn alums.
For Gottesdiener not to turn to Baldwin for help is unwise and naive.
Baldwin needs financial partners. Gottesdiener needs a voice of experience.
Work together, boys. It shouldn't matter which one of you wins this stupid bid to manage an old building. You should go behind closed doors and re-emerge with one cooperative bid the CDA would quickly approve. Then your real work would begin.
