The XL Center’s decline in recent decades has mirrored downtown Hartford’s struggles to attract visitors and marquee attractions befitting a capital city.
Once it was home to the NHL’s Hartford Whalers and a thriving indoor shopping mall. The complex originally known as the Hartford Civic Center enjoyed a brief heyday that came to a crashing halt in January 1978 when the snow-laden roof collapsed hours after a University of Connecticut men’s basketball game. The mishap shuttered the city-owned facility for two years while renovations took place, but setbacks have plagued the center ever since.
Now, economic development officials say a $250 million repositioning program is needed to put the 16,000-seat arena back in the black. The Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), which operates the XL Center, says the investment would turn a $2 million annual deficit into a $2 million surplus by attracting more tenants and revenues.
“We’re out of patches,” said Michael Freimuth, executive director of the CRDA. “We have a 40-year-old building that’s fatigued and inefficient. We’ve got to change the revenue model, change the food and beverage service, change the seating and the sponsorships.”
With the state of Connecticut facing another budget crisis and public funding a major question mark, the latest wrinkle includes a pitch to private investors willing to back a portion of the redevelopment costs. That’s a model that has helped pay for sports arenas in other states, although in Connecticut it would require new legislation enabling such a public-private partnership, Freimuth said. The state’s contribution hinges on continuing legislative budget deliberations.
Absorbing A Series Of Setbacks
The infamous roof collapse was the first in a series of blows that have consigned the XL Center to minor-league status.
UConn opened its on-campus Gampel Pavilion basketball arena in 1990, just as its men’s program attained national prominence, and has split its home schedule between Storrs and the XL Center ever since. The Whalers departed for North Carolina in 1997.
The opening of concert venues at Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino in the 1990s siphoned off much of the big-name concert business.
The city in 1999 selected Newton, Massachusetts-based developer Northland Investment Corp. to demolish the shopping mall that wrapped around the arena and build a $150 million mixed-use development including 400 luxury apartments in two 15-story towers and 200,000 square feet of retail space. A scaled-back version of that project was completed in 2006. Northland and partner AEG also managed the arena, renamed the XL Center in a 2007 naming rights deal with XL Insurance, from 2007 to 2010.
Along with outside competition, observers say the arena’s 1970s-era design fails to maximize revenues from concessions, premium seating and luxury box revenues. Premium seating in the arena’s lower bowl would replace the original skyboxes, which have seen little demand due to their distant location, Freimuth said. The project would include updates to building systems and additional food and beverage venues.
The proposal for repositioning the center builds upon the findings of a 2015 study by SCI Architects of New York and Stafford Sports LLC, a New Jersey-based consulting firm. The firms presented options ranging from complete demolition and rebuilding of an expanded complex at a $500 million price tag to renovating and redesigning the arena for $250 million.
In addition to lower costs, the second option has the benefit of avoiding a multiyear closure of the property and the accompanying loss of revenues, Freimuth said. The project, estimated to take between 26 and 32 months, would still require the arena to be closed for part of the year after basketball and hockey seasons.
Consultants were frank in their assessment of the complex’s future potential and drawbacks. Casinos can outbid venues like the XL Center for top entertainment acts because they use concerts as a loss leader to attract gamblers, and the construction of MGM Springfield will intensify competition. Even with the redesign, prospects for attracting an NHL franchise are murky, the report stated.
Instead it suggested that the XL Center’s future can be maximized by expanding the role of UConn men’s and women’s basketball and its up-and-coming hockey program.
“UConn is playing in arguably the best hockey conference in the country (Hockey East). They’ve been doing well and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue,” said Carl Hirsh, managing partner with Stafford Sports. “It’s not like there’s money for them to build something on campus, and they want to be in Hartford.”
The CRDA put out the word in early May that it’s willing to talk to private partners about investing in the redevelopment. Assuming state laws are changed to allow private developers to have an ownership stake in a public property, the arrangement could grant investors a portion of future revenues, Freimuth said.
“They would get some entitlement to either the physical property or the revenue streams off of it, and therein lies the art of the deal,” he said.
