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Mr. Future, Meet Mr. PasT
OPINION EDITORIAL
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Business New Haven
4/28/2003
By: BNH
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Just two days and two blocks apart, two diametrically opposed versions of reality battled for supremacy.
On April 15, at Hot Tomato's on College Street in downtown New Haven, the city's Convention & Visitors Bureau announced the formation of a new sports commission to generate more sports-related visits to the New Haven area. At the same press conference, a new professional cycling event, the Tour of Connecticut, which will come to New Haven May 16, was announced (see story, page 8).
Two days later and two blocks south, at T.K.'s American Café, the Coalition To Save Our Coliseum held a press conference to release its “people's report” detailing why Veterans Memorial Coliseum should be reopened.
Do these people have each other's phone numbers?
Whether you think sporting events are good, bad or indifferent for New Haven, here is a fact: The Elm City is run by a mayor who moved heaven and earth to get rid of the Coliseum. The fact that it still stands (to forestall a save-the-coliseum movement, everything of value inside the building was hawked about two seconds after the final event ended) is a tribute to nothing more than the state's yawning budget deficit, which has made the $10 million to $15 million needed to knock the structure down hard to come by.
Meanwhile, just 30 hours after the Coalition To Save Our Coliseum press conference and about two miles to the west, the New Haven Ravens took the field for a game against the New York Yankees' Double AA farm club, the Norwich Navigators. To those who were there, there looked to be more bodies on the field than in the seats.
It's an old story, and the reason that new Ravens owner Drew Weber can't wait for the Ravens' 2003 season to end, after which he will pack up and be out of here faster than you can say strike three.
Weber and his predecessor, Ed Massey, have always maintained that no sports franchise can succeed here long-term without firm support from City Hall - support in the form of pressure on businesses to support the team, and in the form of leadership by the mayor in personally showing his face at the ballpark a lot and sending a clear message that the team is a major community priority.
Because City Hall's only pro sports priority has been a one-week-a-year women's tennis tourney, here's the pro sports scorecard: Hockey - 0. Arena football - dead. Baseball - breathing its last. That's why there more than a little irony in forming a “sports commission” in New Haven in 2003, which may in retrospect turn out to be the year the games died for good. BNH
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