Big, brown, doomed behemoths need love, too

Big, brown, doomed behemoths need love, too
Randall Beach, The New Haven Register, 06/22/2003

"GAME NOT OVER." That’s the defiant attitude of a grass-roots group working against mighty big odds to save the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Three officers of the Coalition to Save Our Coliseum gathered near the front steps of their favorite building Thursday to reminisce and talk about how they hope to pull off a preservation "miracle."

I had planned to interview them while we sat on those steps but that proved impossible. A "Do Not Enter" sign is now at the base of the former entryway and a padlocked chain is strung across the bottom step.

"Lots of good times," mused coalition secretary Dick Walsh as he stood on the sidewalk and looked up those steps.

"The circus for the kids," he recalled. "The ice show, the horse show. Hockey."

Walsh added, "I know the mayor (John DeStefano Jr.) wants to brand us ‘hockey nuts.’ That’s just name-calling. It doesn’t deal with the issues."

The overriding issue is this: DeStefano closed the 30-year-old Coliseum last September after a study concluded it did not make economic sense to keep it open. The Coliseum supporters charge the study was flawed and biased.

DeStefano has asked Gov. John G. Rowland for $10.2 million to demolish the Coliseum, followed by subsidies to help Gateway Community College and Long Wharf Theater move downtown. A hotel and convention center would be built too.

DeStefano came to an arts forum last week where designers were unveiling ideas for reusing the Coliseum. But he told them the demolition is a done deal, that all his redevelopment plans flow from the state-financed takedown of the Coliseum.

The Coliseum coalition is outraged that no referendum or public hearings were held to determine the building’s fate.

The coalition’s own study stated, "The future of the Coliseum should be the subject of a broad, regional community conversation and not the private agenda of a few politicians and power brokers."

Coalition treasurer Joe Chieppo, who managed Coliseum concessions inventory, said that despite competition from newer arenas, "We had our niche. We could’ve survived."

Coalition members are heartened that Rowland has not yet allocated the demolition money.

"It’s not over, as long as this building is standing," said Jerry Deno, the coalition president.

Deno described the coalition as "a group of concerned citizens who want to help New Haven get back to the great city it once was."

They admit they have fewer than 100 members and very little money. But they say they gathered 700 signatures of support at the New Haven St. Patrick’s Day parade.

The coalition officers last week set up a Web site (www.newhavencoliseum.com) and vow that they, and the Coliseum, will not go down without a fight.

"We have a vision for what this can be," Walsh said. "We see a brighter, glassed-in look and storefronts. We see the top (parking deck) with restaurants, a fitness center and maybe a helipad."

Walsh disagrees with the oft-heard description of the Coliseum as "ugly" and the charge that the winding ramps to the parking deck were nauseating.

"The atmosphere inside, the friendliness of employees, the camaraderie of the community — it’s the human intangibles that count," Walsh said.

Walsh said the Coliseum became "home." That’s the same word used by another Coliseum backer, Kevin Tennyson, who attended Monday’s forum.

"It was like a family of us at those events," said Tennyson during an interview from his home in North Haven.

Tennyson, who watched at least 800 Coliseum hockey games, from the Nighthawks to the Knights, called the Coliseum "the most magnificent building I ever saw. It was like a big medieval gateway to the city."

Tennyson said he’s still "hoping for a miracle" to save it. "Once it comes down," he said, "it’ll be a long time before it’s replaced — if ever."