Attendance continued to grow during the Hartford Yard Goats’ third season at downtown’s Dunkin’ Donuts Park.
The Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies completed the 2019 season on Monday leading Minor League Baseball’s Eastern League in total attendance for the second consecutive year drawing 414,946 fans. That’s up nearly 1.5 percent from 408,942 in 2018, and up 5 percent from 395,196 in 2017.
The Yard Goats, which averaged 6,193 fans per home game — selling out 51 of 67 games — finished the season in second place for average game attendance behind the Richmond Flying Squirrels (6,255), which hosted three fewer games.
Yard Goats General Manager Mike Abramson said the club, which was forced to play its inaugural 2016 season on the road due to construction delays and cost overruns, in its infancy aimed to lead the 12-team league in attendance with an annual target of 375,000 fans.
Abramson said his staff’s emphasis on planning for sustained success in three years at the ballpark, named as the best in the Eastern League last year, has helped them exceed expectations.
“If you take a look around, you don’t see that in year three,” he said of the club’s attendance milestones. “It’s extremely unusual.”
Abramson credits several drivers to the team’s attendance success, including creative promotions through themed games and free giveaways, strong sponsorships with corporate partners, a first-class gameday staff and “edgy” and “fun” marketing.
“We’ve done a good job reminding people to be fiercely proud of this thing everyone said we couldn’t do,” he said.
And fan support was not the only improvement this year at Dunkin’ Donuts Park.
The Yard Goats finished the regular season in third place at 73-66, up from 65-72 a season ago.
Looking ahead
Land surrounding the $71 million ballpark may soon take on new life as a Stamford developer looks to break ground on a $200 million mixed-use development there by year-end.
Randy Salvatore, founder and CEO of RMS Cos., recently said lawyers are reviewing final terms of the lease for the so-called Downtown North, or DoNo, development. The project could bring up to 800 apartments, 60,000 square feet of retail space and 2,000 parking spaces in four clusters surrounding the stadium.
Roadblocks for the development were lifted this summer after a jury sided with Hartford’s decision to fire the former developers of the DoNo project (Centerplan Construction), and a Superior Court judge’s subsequent ruling to lift liens on the parcels around Dunkin’ Donuts Park.
However, Centerplan’s lawyer has said his client plans to appeal the decision.
Abramson said the development would mainly add to the Yard Goats’ gameday experience, as the club has little room to grow in terms of attendance.
“It’s a whole other level of atmosphere if you are walking through a nicely built area that feels like Blue Back Square or West Hartford Center,” he said. “We obviously want to see this happen and it would be a very positive thing for the city.”
The team, Abramson said, is prepared to reconfigure gameday parking at other nearby lots if and when the developer breaks ground this offseason on city-owned land currently used as surface parking.
“We will educate people on parking when development starts,” he said.
Dunkin’ Donuts Park will remain busy this offseason hosting the second annual “Links At The Yard” event, which will transform the ballpark into a par-3 golf course from Sept. 26-29. It will also host a beer and wine festival on Oct. 19.
The Yard Goats will begin season four at Dunkin’ Donuts Park on April 9, 2020.
