Great letter to St. Louis from Hartford CT: To The Good People of St. Louis: I saw the headlines about Stan Kroenke, owner of the St. Louis Rams, proposing to build a stadium in Los Angeles, and your plan for a new stadium on the Mississippi River that would cost as much as $985 million, roughly half at public expense. Ive visited your great city, where my brother and sister-in-law live, many times. And I have some thoughts from the viewpoint of us in Hartford. Dont Do it! Yes, the glitzy renderings look like a salvation, where empty lots and crumbling buildings now stand. But its not a touchdown. Its a fools goal chasing an NFL owner who doesnt want to be there, building on land that could someday redefine St. Louis. We feel your pain, believe us. Even now, here in the Insurance City, much derided as the nations filing cabinet, were struggling to join the millennial metropolitan boom. And were anguishing over a controversial stadium plan of our own. Its minor league baseball, not the NFL, but its still costly for taxpayers with a questionable economic return. cComments Got something to say? Start the conversation and be the first to comment. ADD A COMMENT 0 Stadiums help with civic pride, which matters, but they dont return financial dividends unless they spur other development. And the St. Louis plan looks like mostly a stand-alone venture. But the risk of spending taxpayer dollars on a new stadium is hardly the main reason for this warning. The bigger matter is the feel of the city itself, and thats where we in Hartford can help our friends in the Show-Me State. Hartford and St. Louis share a lot -- river towns built on manufacturing, both with a claim to Mark Twain, both living in the shadow of larger neighbors, both with priceless historic assets, both fighting to keep our downtown districts lively. Sure, youre more than twice our size now, far more of a national city, not to mention a National League city. But thats the point. Way back when, Hartford was the Silicon Valley of America, home of the leading factories, birthplace of your beloved baseball National League. Over time, blight grew in our city. Cursed with great wealth, we had the means to tear it down and construct grand edifices, concrete hopes for a better future. The walkable, richly aged city blocks we lost didnt seem valuable then, just as those acres near Lacledes Landing dont seem worth saving to you — certainly not compared with the glory of the gridiron in a city that has tasted Super Bowl success. But our great developments, with high-flying names like Constitution Plaza, never worked. So we tried again and again, only to one day awake and find the core of our city gone, the hope of a seamless, youth-driven, 21st century human-scale revival vanished with the very structures we called blight. In the middle of the Clinton boom, we lost the big-league hockey team whose arena had displaced old city blocks. We invented a landing of our own, named Adriaens, in the hopes that it would be like your Lacledes. We even waved $375 million in the face of an NFL owner, offering a downtown, riverfront stadium — a deal hailed with a Touchdown! headline in our newspaper -— only to find ourselves mocked again. That spurning by Patriots owner Bob Kraft was a good thing. We built a college football stadium across the river. Were rebuilding downtown with smaller companies, arts and culture, and, mostly, new apartments in old buildings. Youre way ahead of us, St. Louis. You have the critical mass. You have the Arch. You have the Cardinals and the Blues. You already have a football dome downtown, just 20 years old and now apparently worthless. Dont build another one on the last great stretch of riverfront for just eight big games a year. Those crumbling industrial buildings on the site — the collection, not just the best one — could form the core of a lively, waterfront district, 365 days a year. As your former mayor suggests, look for a stadium site across the river, of someplace else nearby. It matters to us because we want Americas cities to work, and carving them up for rarely used football stadiums that dont bring in much outside money is not the best way to do that. In short, as weve learned the hard way, dont let a few rich boys drooling over construction contracts and sky boxes run the show. Just get yourself some young pitching and beat those Giants. And come visit Hartford. Weve got the nations best barbecue -- east of the Mississippi, that is.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 18:57:33 +0000
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