"This is a small piece of a much, much larger fiscal challenge that we've got as a city."
Luke Bronin
A week after announcing a three-way deal to pay for $10 million in construction overruns at Hartford's new minor league baseball stadium, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin held a town hall meeting with residents to talk about it.
In front of a packed house at the Hartford Public Library on Monday night, Bronin said the taxpayers would eventually have to pay about a third of the total burden -- amounting to a few hundred thousand dollars of extra money each year. And if that was the bad news, it gets worse -- the city has a $10 million deficit this year, and a projected $30 million deficit in the year to come.
"We're going to be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year more in debt service as a result of having to fill this gap, but the problem was already there, and on a much larger scale," said Bronin. "This is a small piece of a much, much larger fiscal challenge that we've got as a city."
One resident asked Bronin whether he had confidence in the project's developer -- the Middletown-based Centerplan Companies. That's because when the roughly $70 million stadium is done, Centerplan still has a contract to build more than $300 million in residential, retail, and entertainment around it.
Bronin said the city needs to see that development through -- because it needs the money it will generate to pay back its lenders.
"So we have a tremendous amount invested as a city -- long before this latest negotiation -- we had a tremendous amount invested as a city in seeing that project proceed," said Bronin. "I'm committed to doing everything I can to make sure that that happens."
Bronin said the stadium should be ready for a first pitch by the end of May.
