Hundreds of people crowded in front of the University of Connecticut’s downtown campus Wednesday for its grand opening, a $140 million investment that comes with lofty expectations for the role the school will play in the city’s future.
Framed by the restored facade of the Hartford Times building, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy stood on the portico and told the crowd below that Connecticut has long ignored the problems of its cities, even as other states learned from their mistakes and began investing in urban areas. Connecticut was slow to make investments in transportation, criminal justice systems and housing, Malloy said.
“Those days are over,” Malloy said. “We understand when our cities thrive, our state will thrive again.”
Malloy said the downtown campus is as much about the university returning to its city roots as it is about being a transformative project for Hartford
“It is in essence a rebirth and a new birth in one,” Malloy said.
The surge in people circulating in downtown Hartford — 2,300 undergraduate and graduate students and 300 faculty — is expected to be a boon to local restaurants and merchants. But the larger benefit may be the urban vibrancy that the development will bring — an attribute of a healthy city and one Hartford has lacked for decades.
The new campus also is a dose of good news for the capital city following the recent announcement that health insurance giant Aetna Inc. will move its headquarters from Hartford to New York City.
“For many years, this magnificent edifice at the center of our capital city sat abandoned, crumbling and dark,” UConn President Susan Herbst told the crowd. “Today, there’s a bright new light here in downtown Hartford as another great Connecticut institution rises up in its place and opens its doors, from decay to new life.”
On Monday, the first students will arrive for classes on a campus spread out over five buildings. The Times facade provides a ceremonial entrance to main academic building, the centerpiece of the campus. The 160,000 square foot structure includes 23 classrooms, 2 computer labs, and 5 science labs.
UConn said Wednesday enrollment at the new campus is up 14 percent over the number enrolled last year when it was in West Hartford.
The downtown campus adds to an already significant UConn presence in the city as the university’s law school and business school are located in Hartford.
For all its perceived benefits, the campus remains a state-owned property and won’t add sorely-needed tax revenue to a city teetering on bankruptcy. And some urban planning experts are warning not to overestimate the amount of money that students will spend at local establishments, given often tight spending allowances.
The campus also remains a commuter school, since there are no dormitories.
Wednesday’s opening is the culmination of a five-year relocation effort. In 2012, UConn said it would move the regional campus — in West Hartford since 1970 — back to Hartford where it was first established in 1939.
After an exhaustive search of sites and selection of the Times property, state-funded costs ballooned from an initial estimate of $70 million to $115 million and later to $140 million as a vision emerged for a “neighborhood campus.”
The idea was for students and faculty to circulate among several academic buildings, visit restaurants and entertainment venues on Front Street and hang out in a new Starbucks cafe at a new Barnes & Noble College campus bookstore.
UConn has named Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, a professor of history at UConn, as the permanent director of the new campus. Overmyer-Velazquez, chairman of the West Hartford board of education, also is the founding director of UConn’s El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean & Latin American Studies. His appointment comes after a national search, the school said.
The push to bring the campus back to Hartford first gained support in the 1990s as part of “UConn 2000.” But those plans were shelved in favor of moving another regional campus to downtown, where Malloy was then mayor. There also was resistance from faculty and staff in West Hartford to relocate to Hartford.
UConn Trustee Thomas D. Ritter, a city native and a former state legislative leader, said sweeping measures have been taken to develop security plans for the campus.
“There’s not one thing that has not been thought of in terms of security for the area that will be [in], where our feet will be on the ground,” Ritter said.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said the campus makes connections among Front Street and City Hall, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Bushnell Park. The campus builds on the momentum of the opening of Dunkin’ Donuts Park, the reopening of the Goodwin Hotel, the renaissance in the former Colt firearms complex and new apartments downtown and on Capitol Avenue.
“And this right here [is] in the heart of it,” Bronin said.
Wednesday’s festivities were marked by a performance of the UConn marching band. A costumed Husky mascot waved a conducting baton and a bear puppet from Bear’s Smokehouse on nearby Front Street clapped along with the crowd during speeches.
Graduate student Stephanie Luzak said the new campus brings UConn to a city rich in culture but also a place where many residents fall victim to social injustice. The new campus has the potential, she said, for social work students to increase awareness around social justice.
“In an era that has been greeted by an onslaught of racism, violence and hate, it is through our values as social workers that we can make a difference within our local community,” Luzak said.
Former Mayor Pedro Segarra, who was among the visitors, said that while the city has made strides in helping low income students attend college — including through its Hartford Promise scholarship program — more must be done.
“There is an issue of accessibility for those students that are financially not in a situation to come here,” he said Wednesday. “I think we are doing more, between the Promise Scholarships and other things. But we need to do more of that.”
Following the ceremonies, visitors streamed into the atrium of the Times building for self-guided tours and servings of ice cream from the UConn dairy. Up on the third floor, Mary Sol Keesey, a professor of chemistry, gave a tour of one of two chemistry labs.
Keesey said she arrived in Hartford Friday, after spending the summer teaching a class at the West Hartford campus. She had some worries about parking and whether it would be safe. Parking has worked out, so far, in the convention center.
“I thought it was not safe but it seems to be safe,” Keesey said. “You see a lot of people, a lot of places you can go.”
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