🔒XL Center renovation key to Hartford’s future

The future of the XL Center has been brought back into the spotlight, although nothing new has developed since the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) last year backed a $250 million plan to renovate the 41-year-old arena.

CRDA held a public hearing last week before formally adopting the plan, which the Hartford Business Journal supports, although we understand the decision to invest a quarter-billion dollars, or more, in a sports venue won't be an easy one, especially as the state remains mired in a fiscal crisis.

But this is an investment the state must make, or it risks losing any chance of creating/maintaining a vibrant Capital City that attracts people, particularly Millennials, to live, work and play.

This isn't just about offering entertainment, it's a workforce-development issue as well. Hartford and the state as a whole already have difficulties attracting human capital; adding a permanent dead zone in the core of downtown would deteriorate the region's attractiveness even further.

In the last few years, CRDA considered several options, including continuing to patch up the arena with smaller annual investments and spending nearly $500 million to build a new facility.

Putting “patches on patches,” as CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth called it, could just end up creating a money pit for the state with largely nothing to show for it. The state has already allocated $40 million since 2014 to upgrade the arena, but many problems still exist and it's not feeding into a larger plan to save the facility long term. Meantime, building new is largely impractical, not only because the building would likely need to find a new home — possibly outside downtown, which makes little sense — but also because there will likely be no political support for spending that much money.

The $250 million investment will basically yield a new arena in its current location, creating the best possible outcome.

To be fair, we understand some state lawmakers' trepidation about investing such a large sum in an entertainment venue at a time when the state's fiscal crisis is forcing deep cuts to social services. At the Nov. 29 public hearing, conservative Sen. Joe Markley (R-Southington) spoke eloquently, even convincingly, about the state's inability to afford “these kinds of projects,” raising red flags about the significant increase in bonding under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, which has also drawn our criticisms and concerns.

He said the state shouldn't spend money on projects that continually require heavy subsidies, arguing the XL Center will likely continue to be a money loser even with a major renovation, particularly as competition for concerts and other events intensifies from casinos and other venues.

He also dismissed the notion of Hartford ever getting another NHL hockey team (the project architects admit that renovating the arena offers no guarantees the city will be able to attract a team, but they also say doing nothing guarantees the NHL will never return).

We don't disagree with many of Markley's points, and this investment shouldn't be made with the idea it will attract NHL hockey back to the Capital City, which is very unlikely.

But the senator fails to grasp the bigger picture of what an active XL Center means to not only Hartford — whose residents, businesses, boosters and officials came out in support of the renovation plan — but the region as a whole.

Small businesses around the XL Center, mainly restaurants and bars, depend on event traffic to keep their doors open and many companies downtown use the venue to entertain clients and employees and see it as a selling point of working in the city. Take that away and the allure of living, working and playing in Hartford is severely diminished, putting another dent in the heart of Connecticut's commercial epicenter.