Paul Bass File Photo
Worcester is staying on as tourney director.
The governor announced Thursday that the state plans to buy New Haven’s annual summer tennis tournament for $618,000 to save it from being stolen by a tournament in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) still has to vote on the plan, at its Oct. 17 meeting.
The New Haven Open at Yale tennis tournament has been played at a state-built stadium next to the Yale Bowl for over two decades, under various names. It used to include both men’s and women’s tournaments; now it’s just a women’s tournament. Attendance has plummeted from a one-time high of 100,375. Attendance this year was 45,000, according to tournament director Anne Worcester.
Enter the Malloy administration. The governor, who is running for reelection in 2014, had his staff negotiate to buy the tournament and fend off a threat from another unidentified “region” to win the rights to stage the tournament from the United States Tennis Association.
The tournament’s most recent “cornerstone” sponsors — Aetna, American Express, First Niagara, Yale, and Yale-New Haven Hospital — have all agreed to continue supporting the tournament under state ownership, according to the state.
The current staff will continue running the tournament, including director Anne Worcester, according to Ben Barnes, who spearheaded the deal as head of the state Office of Policy and Management. Barnes and Worcester discussed the deal in a conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon.
“The state has asked me to stay on as tournament director. I’m happy to do so. I feel very lucky to be the director of a tournament that has done so much good for the city of New Haven and the state of Connecticut,” Worcester said.
The United States Tennis Association previously owned the tournament and leased it to a not-for-profit based in New Haven. It decided this year to sell the tournament. It had a tentative deal to sell it to a men’s tournament in Winston-Salem, Barnes said. Then that outfit failed to get approval to merge the women’s tournament into the annual event. The USTA gave the state a “window” to match the offer to buy the tournament and keep it in New Haven, which it then did, Barnes said. Barnes argued that Winston-Salem would have soon obtained the approvals needed to grab the tournament.
He said the $618,000 for the purchase will come from Manufacture Assistance Act money that had been repaid to the Department of Economic Development from loans for previous projects. Only the CRDA must approve the deal; legislators do not vote on it.
State Sen. Toni Harp, who’s running for mayor in New Haven, took credit for paving the way for the deal — by previously pushing legislation that allows the CRDA to be involved in statewide events, not just those in Hartford.
“It was the New Haven tennis tournament that I had in mind when we expanded the authority’s reach,” a campaign press release quoted Harp as saying. “The tournament is great for the economy of New Haven and the entire region. We had to do what we could to keep it. Fortunately, the forethought to allow CRDA to become involved in New Haven is paying off.”
Barnes was asked in the conference call if Harp played any specific role in the negotiations to save the tournament over the previous months.
Barnes replied that he kept the entire New Haven delegation abreast of the developing negotiations. Asked if she played any specific role, he repeated that she was responsible for the original CRDA policy change that paved the way for the deal.
“She clearly supported our efforts. She clearly has another little thing going on, so I didn’t expect her to be involved in a lot of little meetings. But she has indicated her support,” Barnes said.
Barnes dismissed criticism from State Rep. Larry Cafero that the state shouldn’t be in the sports business. He said the state would not run the tournament; it will continue to lease it to a local not-for-profit.
He said the state needed to act to protect the economic lift the tournament gives the New Haven area. He cited a 2008 “economic impact” study that alleged that the tournament created $25 million in spin-off economic activity. He acknowledged that he takes the “econometrics” of such studies “with a grain of salt.” But he added that “clearly the tennis tournament has an enormous economic impact.”
Barnes was asked if he could name another state government in the U.S. that owns an athletic tournament.
Not “exactly this way” in the U.S., he replied. “In other parts of the world, it’s common for governments to own tournaments.” He added that the U.S. has a “long history of governments heavily subsidizing sporting events” by financing sports venues. New Haven’s tennis stadium, for instance, was built with $18 million in state bond funds.
Click here to read about the last time the tournament was saved, in 2010.
The 2014 tournament is scheduled for Aug. 15 – 23. Don’t be surprised to see the governor there addressing the crowd.