If you build it ...
New UConn, SHU arenas will add value to programs
Two $70 million arenas will soon rise from campuses in Connecticut, an increasingly ambitious college hockey state.
Sacred Heart broke ground in Fairfield on March 15.
UConn is scheduled to break ground in Storrs on May 22.
The arenas will fill a missing piece for the Pioneers and Huskies. Both programs are building — figuratively and now literally — toward the elite level of fellow state Division I teams Yale and Quinnipiac.
By 2022, assuming the construction at UConn and Sacred Heart avoids delay or disruption, all four of the state’s programs, which are among just 61 in Division I, will be playing in front of student-driven crowds in arenas on their campuses and skating on level ice in recruiting.
Yale plays in the iconic 3,500-seat Ingalls Rink, affectionately known as “The Whale.” The building was erected in the mid-1950s, but a 2009 renovation added square footage, improving locker room and training space. Quinnipiac’s multi-use People’s United Center opened in 2007 at a building cost of $52 million. The arena seats about 3,400, and the facility includes common space for hockey and basketball.
Now UConn and Sacred Heart have stepped up with their own bold blueprints.
“I think it’s great to see,” Sacred Heart coach C.J. Marottolo said. “All four programs are making the move to try to be the top in the state . ... You have four universities within close proximity, committing to their hockey programs. It’s great for Connecticut.”
Sacred Heart plays in Atlantic Hockey, the conference UConn left for Hockey East in 2014, and began playing home games at the XL Center in Hartford. Budget plans for the new building, after many years and design iterations, were approved unanimously Wednesday by the UConn Board of Trustees. Design, architectural and construction contracts can now be signed, the latest move in a hockey-facility arms race.
Naming rights for the building, a 2,600-seat arena with additional standing room, are available for a donation of $10 million — half of the $20 million fundraising goal the athletic department must hit.
“There’s a lot of people saying, ‘Why is it costing so much to build a small arena?’ ” said Dan Toscano, Board of Trustees chair. “I’m sure there are people out there who would say, ‘Why are they spending all this money?’ … The union situation in New England construction makes it expensive. As a public university we have all sorts of requirements we have to live by. If UConn were a private university, this project would not cost as much. That’s a reality of life. It’s embedded in all the construction that the state of Connecticut does and, frankly, most states.”
What UConn, its supporters and the state are buying is a building that completes the transformation of the southwest portion of campus, near baseball’s Elliot Ballpark, soccer’s Morrone Stadium, the Rizza Performance Center.
The hockey facility will include training and support for Mike Cavanaugh’s men’s team and Chris MacKenzie’s women’s team, locker rooms, offices, press box, lounges, sound and lighting features and more amenities.
Sacred Heart’s arena capacity will be 4,000.
Some wonder why UConn’s isn’t, also.
“I promise you, you can walk into a lot of athletic departments and find a lot of plans that have been designed but never been built,” athletic director David Benedict said. “If you design pie in the sky, it never gets done. This is a project where we needed to hit a budget target, which in this case was $70 million, and it’s going to be a fantastic facility. We had to design a project where we could get everything that we wanted out of it for the amount of money we could afford. There are a lot of people who want a bigger house, but if you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it.”
Attendance has been on a steady decline in Hartford since UConn distributed an average of 5,539 tickets per game during their Hockey East debut season of 2014-15. In 2018-19, UConn averaged 3,954 tickets distributed, with an average of 2,729 being scanned (a show percentage of 67.6). In 2019-20, the Huskies distributed an average of 4,583, with an average of 2,682 scanned (55.9 percent).
There have been crowds of 7,000plus on occasion for high-profile games against Boston College and Boston University. UConn will split its games between Hartford and Storrs after construction of the new building, taking on the playing model similar to the one used in basketball.
Benedict said UConn consulted most other Hockey East members during the building planning phases.
“Nobody told me we should be
building something bigger,” Benedict said. “Nobody said, ‘Dave, you’re crazy, you have to build something at 4,000 seats.’ Everyone said, ‘Dave, we can’t fill our arenas every game.’ We’d much rather have a sold-out arena every game. And most of the people that sit on the side of the desk I’m on would tell you (they would) much rather walk into a facility that is jam-packed and you can’t get a ticket than walk into one that’s got 1,000 extra seats so you can say ‘Look how big we built this.’ It doesn’t matter if you can’t fill. Filling them once out of 10 games versus filling them every night is different. If you can say this is sold-out every single night, that creates something. And hopefully that is what we’ll have.”
The remaining $50 million in cost, after fundraising, will be split between $33 million gained from the sale of revenue bonds and $17 million in university funds. The new building will be 97,300 square feet, adjacent to Freitas Ice Forum on Jim Calhoun Way. The Huskies played games at Freitas during the 2020-21 season due to the pandemic.
“It was probably May (2020) when one of our trustees asked if we should really be going through this construction process in the middle of a pandemic,” Toscano said. “But the translation in construction to waiting is higher cost. If we wait, the cost is going to go up. We had sort of worn out our welcome with Hockey East on getting this thing done, and it may well end up being quite a bit cheaper. … I’m excited to unlock potential and excited to have a home for our hockey programs that reflect who we are as a university and reflect our programming in athletics.”
Costs and timelines have “changed based on going through the public/private (options) and doing it as a university project, and ultimately what we thought we could really build it for and what the university and the (athletic department) thought we could fund,” Benedict said.
UConn will have the smallest capacity in Hockey East. Providence’s Schneider Arena holds 3,030, while some schools, like BC, play in larger buildings that house both hockey and basketball. BC’s Conte Forum has a capacity of about 8,000.
“This puts forward our best and most talented people,” Toscano said of athletic facility construction. “I’m totally good with it and I think it’s good for the state. If you want to sit down with a sharp pencil and calculator and try to figure it out, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. If you look at public universities around the country and some of the crazy things they have going on in athletics, we run a spartan ship, comparatively. I can stand in front of any legislative committee or governor or staff and talk about how this all makes sense, and I feel really good about it.”
Sacred Heart unveiled plans for its arena during the weekend of the inaugural Connecticut Ice tournament, which featured all four state programs at Bridgeport’s Webster Bank Arena in January 2020. The Pioneers won the tournament, defeating Quinnipiac in front of a raucous crowd of about 6,000.
The energy that weekend in Bridgeport, Marottolo said, was a reminder of what it would feel like to skate in an on-campus facility packed with students. Winning the tournament just as the school’s $70 million plan was announced validated the decision.
“It was a really good statement weekend for our program, for our university,” Marottolo said.
Among those who heard the statement? Donors, corporate sponsors, alumni.
Fundraising for the facility is ongoing, but school officials are optimistic about donations — even during the economic minefield caused by the pandemic. The pandemic delayed construction and the overall cost rose slightly (the first projection was $60 million), so aggressive fundraising has continued over the past 15 months.
Jim Barquinero, Sacred Heart’s senior vice president for enrollment and athletics, said the school’s message to potential donors has been consistent. An on-campus arena will raise the profile of the hockey program, help boost the school’s presence on a national stage and create energy among students and the community.
There was a $5 million gift from Frank and Marisa Martire, who have previously given financial support to a chapel on campus and to the Liberal Arts Center that features their name. In fact, the arena will be named for the Martire family. Frank, a 1969 Sacred Heart graduate, is the chairman of the school’s board of trustees and owns an equity interest in the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.
“That gift from him, opened up the eyes of many, many others,” Barquinero said. “People with discretionary wealth and corporations making decisions on how to promote their companies, they’re very, very smart people. They’re wise with their money. When it comes to a university and, in this case, hockey, there’s some passion required. And that’s what we’re trying to help develop.”
Besides donations, the school will pay for the facility through borrowing, ticket and concession revenue and future income from renting the venue for outside use.
The arena, which is rising on the site of former General Electric headquarters the school purchased in 2016 and turned into the West Campus, is nearly a decade in the making. The hockey program played at the Milford Ice Pavilion for much of its life in Division I, but hockey was always viewed having potential for growth.
After shifting home games to Webster Bank Arena in 2016, school officials began investigating the need for an arena on campus.
Barquinero said planning took a two-pronged strategy focused on the player and the fan experience.
Fans will have direct access to the arena from a parking garage; there will be luxury suites and club rooms, a center-hung scoreboard and a pro shop. The arena will be built to appeal to students and outsiders. And yes, Sacred Heart is hoping to lure people from both the neighboring communities and from metro New York.
That’s part of the pitch: Notre Dame or Michigan or Boston College can come play at Sacred Heart as an opportunity to draw alumni from New York and Fairfield County. Or maybe those schools will come to Sacred Heart to play games and hold admission events as they appeal to prospective students from Fairfield County.
“We’re very popular for colleges and universities,” Barquinero said. “We’re a prime location for alumni of all the schools we bring in. … We have the ability now to talk to schools because of the quality of this arena. If they want to bring a game down to metro New York, we’re that team for them.”
Boston College will be the opponent for the first men’s game on Jan. 14, 2023. The hope is that the schedule outside of Atlantic Hockey will be bolstered by the lure of the new arena.
And with a capacity of about 4,000, the arena should be capable of absorbing fans of the opponents. School officials studied attendance figures around the country and in the Northeast while also consulting with those who run concerts and events on campus, such as lectures or convocations.
“That just felt like the right number for us,” Barquinero said. “Now, we’ve got work to do to generate a regular fan base. But we’re very bullish on our student body and community.”
Marottolo also had a voice in planning aspects of the arena.
He’s been in rinks most of his life, playing at Choate and Northeastern, coaching at Trinity and Yale before landing at Sacred Heart. The son of North Haven knows what’s needed and he’s been making a point to tour buildings over the past few years.
“Especially the new arenas … you ask what they did, what did they learn? What wouldn’t you do again if you had a chance to do it again?” Marottolo said. “We picked a lot of people’s brains.”
Representatives from the school also consulted with the New York Islanders, who operate their American Hockey League affiliate at Webster Bank Arena. They spoke to Stamford-based strength and conditioning coach Ben Prentiss, who has a long history working with NHL players. The under-the-hood features for players were important, from strength and conditioning training space to the type of tub used for ice baths.
The 122,158-square-foot arena will have a NHL-standard sheet of ice. There will be a rapid-shot puck room that features a system automatically passing and collecting pucks. There are the requisite meeting, film and lounge rooms, and a locker room described as “Olympic-level.”
The amenities play a role in recruiting, especially in the age of the transfer portal. Sacred Heart has seven transfers coming, and Marottolo believes the arena — the message sent by the school, the commitment to the program — was a factor.
“It’s opening doors for us to be able to really engage with some high-end guys,” Marottolo said. “We’ve been able to attract highend guys before … but with this new rink, it’s helped us talk to a larger number of top-end players. They feel this rink is just the beginning for us.
“When this hit, that you’re building a $70 million arena that’s not being shared with anything else, that gets the attention of people. Especially young men that hockey’s their love. This arena is a game-changer for us.”