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Bring Back The Whale!!!

GHartford

By GHartford
in Greater Hartford

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drc72 Burg

drc72

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Gottesdiener and Baldwin have met, but they disagreed on how to pursue a franchise. Baldwin has offered to run an AHL franchise in the city, proving the market can support hockey before pursuing an NHL team for a renovated Civic Center. Gottesdiener has proposed buying a franchise, then building a facility.

Madison Square Garden can opt out of the HCC lease, in which case they can take away the Wolf Pack.

Oh I see. MSG owns the WolfPack outright?

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uconn99 Hamlet

uconn99

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The state really need to consider just building an arena with or without a pro franchise. The city will eventually get a team, be it a NBA or NHL team. It is going to happen within 5 or so years. Having arena in place would only show how much commitment the city and state have. If all else fails and there is not a team in 5-8 years the world isn't over. UConn would be a big tenant to the arena, there are many concerts each year that the old civic center still lands to this date, and of course there is the AHL if all else fails.

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MadVlad Town

MadVlad

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Just remember, MSG isn't doing anyone any favors booking-wise. People that come here, Billy Joel for instance, have always come here and like the city. When MSG took over, they promised the World and have delivered the North Pole...

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drc72 Burg

drc72

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Just remember, MSG isn't doing anyone any favors booking-wise. People that come here, Billy Joel for instance, have always come here and like the city. When MSG took over, they promised the World and have delivered the North Pole...

MSG doesn't care about the HCC. We need a new arena period!

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HartfordTycoon Town

HartfordTycoon

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I found this interesting. Now we know Larry's story. He's a homegrown CT guy who cares about Hartford and has lots of $$$. You gotta love this guy right about now.

Investor Never Lost Faith In Hartford

By JEFFREY B. COHEN

Courant Staff Writer

April 16 2006

Lawrence R. Gottesdiener was part of a group of boys who grew up on a mostly Jewish street in a New London neighborhood not far from Ocean Beach.

It was a close-knit neighborhood where doing well in school mattered, but so did sports. He and his friends played endless games of football, basketball and baseball - and, friends recalled, there were times when Gottesdiener was among the last guys picked when the teams were chosen.

"He was a grinder," said Stuart "Stuie" Hendel, who used to call Gottesdiener "Fats" and has known him since he was 3 years old. "He wasn't the skinniest kid on the block, but he worked and worked, and, when he was 15, all of the sudden he became the fastest kid."

"Just because he worked."

Now, Gottesdiener is the most significant real estate developer in Hartford, with a half-billion dollars' worth of holdings in the city, a third of his Northland Investment Corp.'s $1.4 billion national portfolio. Until now, he has made his money largely by buying what other people didn't want.

Somewhere along the way, though, his passion for undervalued real estate turned into a passion for what he thinks is an undervalued city. He is not shy in admitting that he wants to be the guy who changes Hartford once and for all, and he thinks a key to doing that is bringing major league hockey back to the city.

Courant Article

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drc72 Burg

drc72

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I found this interesting. Now we know Larry's story. He's a homegrown CT guy who cares about Hartford and has lots of $$$. You gotta love this guy right about now.

Investor Never Lost Faith In Hartford

By JEFFREY B. COHEN

Courant Staff Writer

April 16 2006

Lawrence R. Gottesdiener was part of a group of boys who grew up on a mostly Jewish street in a New London neighborhood not far from Ocean Beach.

It was a close-knit neighborhood where doing well in school mattered, but so did sports. He and his friends played endless games of football, basketball and baseball - and, friends recalled, there were times when Gottesdiener was among the last guys picked when the teams were chosen.

"He was a grinder," said Stuart "Stuie" Hendel, who used to call Gottesdiener "Fats" and has known him since he was 3 years old. "He wasn't the skinniest kid on the block, but he worked and worked, and, when he was 15, all of the sudden he became the fastest kid."

"Just because he worked."

Now, Gottesdiener is the most significant real estate developer in Hartford, with a half-billion dollars' worth of holdings in the city, a third of his Northland Investment Corp.'s $1.4 billion national portfolio. Until now, he has made his money largely by buying what other people didn't want.

Somewhere along the way, though, his passion for undervalued real estate turned into a passion for what he thinks is an undervalued city. He is not shy in admitting that he wants to be the guy who changes Hartford once and for all, and he thinks a key to doing that is bringing major league hockey back to the city.

Courant Article

Great article in the Courant. Looks like Larry is very commited to Hartford. Man if we can get just a few more people to think like him, then the possibilities would be endless. :D

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HartfordTycoon Town

HartfordTycoon

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Great article in the Courant. Looks like Larry is very commited to Hartford. Man if we can get just a few more people to think like him, then the possibilities would be endless. :D

Everyone here thinks like him, we just need the money. It's a shame how the people with money so often have no clue what to do with it, and those who know what to do with it can't get any. :cry:

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drc72 Burg

drc72

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Everyone here thinks like him, we just need the money. It's a shame how the people with money so often have no clue what to do with it, and those who know what to do with it can't get any. :cry:

Yeah it would be nice to have some money of our own to invest in the city. I'd probably build my own tower if I could.

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Theophrastus Bombastus Hamlet

Theophrastus Bombastus

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Wouldn't it be great to see another article like this in a few years?

Whalers Open at Civic Center Tonight

By TOM HINE

The Hartford Courant

January 11, 1975

The countdown is over.

The many years of waiting have long since disappeared.

It's now only a matter of hours.

The City of Hartford is on the major league sports map, and the New England Whalers have a home of their own.

It culminates at 7:30 tonight when the first WHA hockey puck is dropped at center ice in the two-day-old Hartford Civic Center.

And Hartford...and the Whalers...couldn't be happier. It's been a long road.

That's exactly where the Whalers have spent most of the last three month. On the road. Even their 13 games in West Springfield were away from home, only a temporary residence for a major league hockey team that awaited ever so patiently for the final touches on a new Civic Center they'll move into tonight.

The San Diego Mariners are listed as the Whalers' first Hartford foes, but most of the fans don't know it.

The 10,507 who bought tickets to assure a sellout tonight over ten days ago could care less who the Whalers are playing. They just want to be there when it happens.

Fancy words like icing, blue lines, red lines, creases, offsides...that will all come later.

Teams like the Jets, Aeros, Nordiques, Fighting Saints, Roadrunners..that will all come later, too.

And names like Abrahamsson, Swain, Fotiu, Ley, Webster, Pleau...they, too, may be unfamiliar to most patrons, but they'll be household words in only a short time.

Hartford wanted major league hockey, and it will have it tonight.

The Whalers, first-season champions in the three-year-old WHA, got off to a quick start toward their third Eastern Division title in a row.

But, problems have beset them of late, and they've been losing more than they're winning.

New England has won only two of its last eleven games, just seven of its last 20, but it still leads its division by 14 points.

The Whalers' 25 road games have had a lot to do with the recent losses, overlooking perhaps an even more important item...the Whalers' injuries.

Only five of the 21 players on the roster have managed to escape injury since Nov. 29 and 20 separate injuries have forced eleven players to miss at least one game. Many players missed a lot more than that.

But, healthy or not, winning or not, the Whalers are here.

Even thought they won't see the Civic Center for the first time until an 11 a.m. practice this morning, the Whalers are glad to be home.

It can't help but be an exciting moment when they first skate onto the one-inch glazed surface to meet the Mariners.

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mediamongrel Hamlet

mediamongrel

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Since the Hurricanes are on the verge of winning the Stanley Cup, I have to say that there is plenty of fan support by fans down here for the team, but not a lot from the community and media. I actually left CT back in the late 90's for a job transfer and ended up in southern VA near Danville. I was lucky enough to see the "Whalers" play in Greensboro, NC during their first year as the "Canes." As I said though the community as a whole and the media totally ignore hockey down here and it is sad. The radio stations would rather talk about Nascar or the boring Panthers training camp than discuss how well the Hurricanes have played this year. Granted there aren't a whole bunch of die-hard hockey fans down here, but if the radio and TV stations at least mentioned hockey, there might be more. Anyways, I will always think of the Canes as the Whalers. After last nights 5-0 demolition of Edmonton, we are two games closer to finally saying the Whalers have won a Stanley Cup!

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robm324 Whistle-Stop

robm324

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It kills me that the Canes are two games from winning the Cup, since I know that if they got any where near as close when they were in Hartford, the Arena would have been sold out every night and the support would have demanded a new arena.

Ugh.

For anyone who cares here is a good article on Brass Bonanza posted on NHL.com on 6/5/06

Brass Bonanza article

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drc72 Burg

drc72

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Well to be fair... most sports fans do not care about Hockey in the USA. In Canada Hockey is almost a religion. Not so here.

The fans sure as hell cared more in Hartford than they did in North Carolina.

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