A massive vision of renewal for the Hartford riverfront. Hartford Courant, 5/5/98

What tells you that your own city is the pick of the litter? Is it the number of miles of interstate highway you can boast within your boundaries? Hugest swaths of public park land? Size of your development parcels? Number of Dunkin Donut franchises? Largest quantity of taxable properties? Biggest block parties?

In early 1998, such a victory could be claimed for Hartford, or so the thinking went at the time for a key advisory panel, if the downtown riverfront area were developed with 1,000 housing units, a convention center, retail stores, movie theaters, and park land—crowned with a massive sports stadium.

A stadium would say Hartford is number one. Hartford Courant, 3/22/98

The stadium was envisioned for concerts and large sports events, among other things. Governor Jodi Rell, then lieutenant governor, chaired the panel that proposed the plan, fueled by a combination of public and private dollars. A state authority was created to oversee and coordinate the numerous efforts, many of which have come to fruition in one way or another over the ensuing decade—except for the sports stadium, which was in some respects a real driving force behind the entire plan, as originally conceived.

A March 22, 1998 article in the Hartford Courant (pictured above, right) quoted one of the panel members, Anthony Autorino, saying of the stadium, “We needed something that was really going to say, ‘Hartford is No. 1.’ It needed something bold.”

The sports stadium simply never came to be. How can we now know if Hartford is number one?

(more…)