It would be easy to dismiss Howard Baldwin as a Don Quixote figure, obsessed with recapturing past glory and oblivious to the changing world around him.
But that would be ignoring all the impossible dreams Baldwin has already achieved, including the birth of the Hartford Whalers.
Let’s look past Baldwin as the producer of an Oscar-winning film and focus on Baldwin the hockey impresario who built the World Hockey Association and changed the face of the sport. Along the way, he brought major league sports to Hartford. He also is widely credited with planting the National Hockey League flag in Silicon Valley, a spot with neither the climate nor history that suggests it would support pro hockey. But it did. Later, Baldwin was involved in ownership of NHL franchises in Minneapolis and in Pittsburgh. Bottom line: This man knows the inner workings of pro hockey.
He looks around the league and sees a parallel between Hartford and Winnipeg, a former WHA city that lost its NHL team and now has won one back. He sees NHL franchises struggling in Phoenix and Dallas and Miami and even Long Island. Bottom line: He knows there are franchises looking for new locations.
He believes Hartford is a viable landing spot.
The $105 million plan he rolled out for upgrading the XL Center and breathing life into downtown Hartford is impressive. We salute his efforts and we salute Aetna’s willingness to fund an economic study that supports the vision.
But it will take a lot more corporate support to get this phoenix to rise.
The days of lavish state subsidies are long gone; it will take an economic development argument to win any support. And to that extent, Baldwin’s efforts to quantify the economic impact are right on. In the context of the state’s ‘First Five’ plan, perhaps rejuvenating the XL Center will add the 1,000-plus jobs that the study envisions. And that could qualify for some state help, say $30 million.
Now, where does the next $75 million come from? And how does Baldwin get fans in the seats to demonstrate their support?
If this process is going to gain any momentum, somebody needs to show the money. Real money. Tell the community what level of financial commitment ownership is willing to put into the project, then let’s talk.
Until there’s a financial blueprint, this talk of bringing back the Whalers is all sound and fury signifying nothing, as Shakespeare would say.
But then the Bard never met Baldwin.
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A junket for Malloy
As junkets go, spending a quick trip to Kuwait and Afghanistan isn’t usually at the top of the wish list. The weather stinks; so do the accommodations. It’s not the kind of trip where the wife and kids want to tag along. But for a politician with aspirations, it’s gold.
When the Defense Department offered Dannel Malloy the chance to take part in its round of junkets for politicians, he jumped. There’s no downside here for Malloy or for Connecticut. Our residents, our sons and daughters, are serving — and sometimes dying — there. As Malloy pointed out, he’s already ordered the flags to half mast on nine occasions.
It’s good business for a governor to embrace wider perspectives. It’s also good politics if that governor wants later to seek federal office. Pardon our cynicism but we see dots here that form a straight line.
As for the Defense Department, it’s also good business to court favor with the governor of a state deeply invested in the production of military equipment — from Sikorsky to Electric Boat and beyond. Faced with looming cutbacks, it’s nice to have an ally to twist arms in the congressional delegation.
So we have a win-win? Not quite. All this was conducted on the taxpayer’s dime. And those dimes could be better spent.
