New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
West Haven sees benefit in Division I spot for UNH athletics
WEST HAVEN — If a rising tide will lift all vessels, University of New Haven officials are looking for ways to increase the volume of the ocean.
“We want to help raise the boat of the entire university,” said Greg Eichhorn, vice president for enrollment and student success for UNH.
So far, university officials said they believe they’ve made significant strides to enhance the school’s academic and student life offerings. What’s next, they say, is moving the athletics program from Division II to Division I and a Football Championship Subdivision football program. That means new and enhanced facilities, more student athletes enrolled and further development that could benefit the city.
“Our intent with Division I is we think this will greatly benefit us from a branding perspective,” Eichhorn said. “There’s strong support from our alumni base for this, and what we want to do from a prospective student standpoint.”
Eichhorn said the expansion of the university’s athletics program
is “on a slow, meticulous basis,” to build capacity for the new and upgraded athletics facilities and higher enrollment.
As a first step, the university is planning to break ground on a roughly $10 million, 30,000 square-foot athletic facility called The Peterson Center, named after donor and former football player Dave Peterson from the Class of 1988.
According to Sheahon Zenger, the university’s athletic director since 2019, that building will add locker room, sports medicine, strength and conditioning and meeting room space for the university’s athletics program, which will free up practice and locker room facilities in the existing Charger Gymnasium for more teams.
Local impact
Eichhorn said the university’s planned athletic expansion would also come with further development. Although he said the university would ideally expand its residence hall, academic and athletic facilities, it’s “premature” to talk about purchasing buildings.
“First we have to get the invites and build infrastructure. There’s not a plan to break ground on a stadium or anything like that. You will see us doing more things like (the Peterson Center) or enhancing our current facilities,” he said.
Mayor Nancy Rossi said the city has an ongoing, collaborative relationship with the university, and she welcomes ideas that might bring attention and economic development to the city.
“Anything we can work cooperatively with UNH and the city, I’m more than happy to explore any of those possibilities,” she said.
Alan Olenick, director of the West Haven Chamber
of Commerce, said it would be “wonderful” for the university to move to Division I.
“For UNH to compete at that level and hopefully bring people into the region to watch them play, it would be fantastic, especially on a football and basketball level,” he said.
Olenick said, however, that the current state of parking on the university’s campus and in the surrounding neighborhood could be cause for concern. Additionally, he said, there is “a yin and yang with the university and the neighborhood and people in the neighborhood,” and further development would need to be addressed appropriately.
Carroll E. Brown, a community leader in the Allingtown district where the university resides, said she worries development in the neighborhood could be pricing out longtime residents of the area in order to attract a transient population of college students.
“There’s nothing for the kids in West Haven to do...,” she said.
Ron Quagliani, chairman of the city council, but also an employee of the university as its vice president of public safety, said the planned athletic expansion would “give West Haven residents something additional to rally around.”
“It will be an economic driver and increase West Haven’s visibility with investors and bring in visitors who will spend money at West Haven businesses,” he said.
At the nearby University Commons project, a development project of Acorn Group that created several buildings with street-level commercial space and upper-level market-rate housing, The Atwood, a 90,000-square-foot development completed in 2017, is now fully-leased, according to Rossi. A the second project, the 61,000-squarefoot Park View, has leased out its apartments but still is seeking commercial tenants, Rossi has said.
Rising
“We’re not trying to be a UConn or a Notre Dame or something like that. Our plan is to have the adequate enrollment, meeting the needs of our prospective students,” Eichhorn said.
But by moving up an athletic division, the university also hopes to improve on its ability to expand by attracting more name recognition, enrollment interest and revenue, Eichhorn said.
Zenger said the plans for expansion are focusing less on “glitz and glitter” than on providing adequate facilities.
Further, in just about one year, Zenger said, the university has added roughly 100 student athletes to its roster with a women’s rugby team of about 30 student athletes soon to join the university, overall expanding from about 360 athletes on campus to 500.
Zenger said the executive
search firm that contacted him for the role he took at UNH communicated that the university’s priority would be exploring whether it should move up a division. For seven months after his hire, he said, he and his team were “hip-tohip” with a consultant to plan an expansion before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed their progress. However, Zenger said it may have worked to the program’s advantage.
“It allowed me time to continue to fundraise and move forward with working toward building a facility that is necessary for this move,” he said.
In order to move up a division within the NCAA, the university must score an invite to a Division I conference. Both Eichhorn and Zenger said they have signed confidentiality agreements and cannot divulge which conferences they have had discussions with, but they know what characteristics they are
seeking from a new athletic conference.
“We’d be in conversation with more like institutions like ourselves,” said Eichhorn.
“We don’t want to join a league in Division I that has that competing across the country that we’re not going to be able to afford, like the tennis team can’t afford to play in Georgia on a Wednesday afternoon. We’re looking for something more regional.”
Zenger said the expansion efforts the university has taken so far — such as the planned Peterson Center and adding another team — are intended to make the program more attractive to conferences.
“Where I grew up, we say you measure twice and cut once. There’s no need to rush this. If an invite came tomorrow you want to be ready, but if it came in two years that’s OK too,” he said.
Ted Hotaling, head coach of the UNH men’s basketball program, said he does not expect a change in how his team operates on and off the court if the team changes divisions. He does, however, think there are advantages to how the team can appeal to potential recruits.
“The new building will impact coaches and players on a daily basis, with another facility to get their work done. From a recruiting standpoint, it will impact a variety of new potential prospects in ways we haven’t seen in the past. It’s needed here,” he said.
“Any time you can show something shiny and new, it shows commitment,” Hotaling said. “What recruits and families want to know is whether your program is committed to performing at the highest level.”