|
|
|
Building Tensions
|
Business New Haven
5/14/2001
By: BNH
|
This fall a new 8,000-seat arena will open in Bridgeport. Its shiny new presence 20 miles away will doubtless impact the ability of Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven to attract events.
The question is: Does anyone really care?
Well, John Burnap cares. He's the guy who came here two years ago to run the Coliseum when the city, after many years of procrastination and foot-dragging, finally turned over operations at the building to a private professional operator, SMG.
Lacking a whole lot to work with, Burnap has brought a creative approach to create more and more kinds of event days for his building. Last winter, for the first time in recent memory, Yale played two men's ice hockey games at the Coliseum, and - surprise! - the experiment was so successful that next season the Bulldogs will play more games downtown, including contests against national champ Boston College and hyper-rival Harvard.
When New Haven's American Hockey League franchise, the Beast, folded, Burnap calculated that any pro hockey was better than no pro hockey, so he helped get a lower-level pro league, the United Hockey League, into the building, and the New Haven Knights survived a year here and will live to play a second. He moved mountains to try to get Hartford's Continental Basketball Association team down here before that league collapsed, and later this month Burnap is expected to announced that an arenafootball2 (the minor-league iteration of the indoor Arena Football League) franchise, owned by the New York Islanders ownership group, will begin play at the Coliseum next April.
So, some good things are happening. But when the 220,000-square-foot Arena at Harbor Yard, as the Bridgeport facility is known, opens this fall, the Coliseum will face stiff new competition, and not just for sports - the circus, wrestling, "monster" truck shows, concerts, expositions and the like.
Until recently, no one seems to have noticed that when you place two similarly-sized facilities 20 miles apart, they will necessarily compete for programming. The agreement awarding the Bridgeport building $35 million in public bonding money stipulated that management of both buildings must consult on ways to "share" programming. That stipulation, however, appears to be pretty toothless: Park City Development Director Michael Freimuth has to date refused to meet with the Coliseum folks, citing potential antitrust concerns.
One thing seems certain: Even if the state succeed in getting both sides together, any agreement that results is sure to be PR-driven - and temporary. The unshakable law of the marketplace demands that hard-nosed competition between the buildings will inevitably ensue.
Burnap says that many of his events rely on the lucrative Fairfield County market to fill seats. Now, many members of that marketplace will be able to be entertained much closer to home - and surely they will.
The Coliseum has one, and only one, natural advantage: Cost. Because the New Haven building has no mortgage it can offer promoters a lower cost structure. In addition, patrons of the Bridgeport arena will have to pay a ten-percent ticket tax.
Nevertheless, it is going to be an uphill battle for the Coliseum's management - not that the unloved New Haven building hasn't faced plenty of uphill battles in the past.
We wish that the Bridgeport folks would find their way clear to sit down with their New Haven counterparts to talk about the future. But in any event, Burnap and SMG are going to need every ounce of their creativity to maintain the Coliseum as a vital part of New Haven's economy and civic like. After all, it's a big world out there - Quinnipiac hoops, anyone?
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
