Hartford’s stadium soap continues

The Hartford YardGoats will not play the opening games at Dunking Donuts Park in early June. The contractor missed today’s deadline to ensure that the YardGoats could play in the stadium that seems to be cursed.

Today’s deadline was set by the city , the developers DoNo Hartford LLC and Centerplan Cos. and the Yard Goats ownership to ensure the team could begin play at the new Hartford ballpark at the beginning of June. But the results of today’s inspection were not as whished. On May 3rd the city had some serious doubts about the contractor meeting the deadline.

Now the deadline is missed, the contractor has to pay the city $50, ooo for the first day after the deadline and $15,ooo for every following day until the ballpark is declared substantly finished. As long as the stadium is not substantly finished, the YardGoats don’t have to pay the $500,000 yearly rent and on top they don’t have to pay the $2 million pledged towards cost overruns.

The YardGoats don’t have a serious problem yet but they may have if the stadium has not been finished before June 22. On that day the Connecticut Tigers will start their season and the YardGoats have played their home games in the Tigers’ ballpark because the lack of their own.

The city of Hartford has a couple of options now:

The city now has the option of removing the developers, DoNo Hartford LLC and Centerplan Cos. from the construction of the ballpark and begin levying fines of $50,000 on the first day past the deadline and $15,000 a day after that until construction is “substantially completed” allowing the team to take possession of the 6,000 seat stadium in “turnkey” conditions.

The city can also file a claim with the insurer of the ballpark in what is known as calling the performance bond. If the insurer agrees that the city has a claim they would cover the remaining cost of finishing the ballpark, expected to be about $2 million.

The official said the city was weighing all its options and planning to meet with interested parties. It is unclear when that meeting will take place the officials said.

To be continued again?