🔒Blame shared in Hartford stadium debacle

It appears minor league baseball may not be played in Hartford this year after all.

With Mayor Luke Bronin's decision to fire Centerplan Cos. and DoNo LLC as builder of the $63 million Dunkin' Donuts Park, the Hartford Yard Goats inaugural home season in the Capital City is in jeopardy; there's a high probability the Double-A baseball team will need to play the remainder of its home schedule elsewhere.

The stadium debacle is another black eye for the city, which can't afford more bad publicity or financial constraints.

As the finger-pointing ensues among the various stakeholders, it's clear there is lots of blame to go around; no stakeholder is completely faultless.

The chief mistake was made early in the process, when the team, former mayor Pedro Segarra's administration and developer agreed to rush along a project that clearly needed more time to plan, develop and execute. We are now experiencing the consequences of a major project initially negotiated behind closed doors and out of the public light.

When ground was broken on Dunkin' Donuts Park in Feb. 2015, there was a lot of skepticism, even doubt about a then $56 million stadium being erected in about a year's time. Even with an unusually mild winter the developer didn't come close to meeting its deadline.

Some may place all the blame on Centerplan Cos.'s incompetence. We aren't willing to go there just yet. We will let the surety bond insurer's investigators and possibly the legal system sort out the facts and determine what went wrong.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who inherited the stadium fiasco from his predecessor, and Yard Goats owner Josh Solomon have been harsh in their criticism of Centerplan, arguing they lost confidence in the Middletown developer's ability to provide a reliable timeline for the project. Centerplan has missed several deadlines they promised to meet.

Centerplan has countered that more than 100 design changes ordered by the city since January are to blame for the delays.

The reality is, this project was rushed from the start and when major projects are hurried along it paves a path for pitfalls. For example, the request for proposals to develop the stadium and broader downtown north mixed-use development was issued July 2, 2014 and had an Aug. 1 return deadline. There was an informational hearing on the project July 16, 2014, which means developers had only two to four weeks to create a blueprint for a complex project worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money. Only two legitimate bids were submitted for the development, including Centerplan's.

We understand part of the rush to complete the stadium in a year's time was the fact that the team's lease in New Britain expired at the end of 2015, but that's still not an excuse to hurry the project. The team should have tried to extend its lease in the Hardware City for one more year, or make arrangements to play in another temporary home during the 2016 season.

It's a similar playbook used by the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings, which played its home games the last two seasons at the University of Minnesota's campus, while its new $1 billion stadium was being erected. This would have stretched out the entire downtown north project timeline and maybe even encouraged more project bids.

That's all irrelevant at this point, but we hope the city learns from its mistakes and re-thinks how it considers, approves and shepherds along major developments. We also still want the Yard Goats to be successful in the Capital City when they eventually do play baseball here.

Rooting against the home team makes little sense — even for those who were opposed to the project from the start — because taxpayers will be the ultimate loser if the team fails to gain traction.

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