A short walk to Trumbull Street. (1970)

Uh, it's 6 minutes past 8:00. Bob J. Carlo with the greatest music in the world saying good morning everybody. Are you today? Ah, yeah. What do you think? The misery is over at Mystery Phone. Uh-uh. Just go let your calluses relax for another few hours because beginning at noon time, we have a brand new phone number. A brand. >> Good morning everyone. It's 8:07 WP cash call time on the Love and Morton show. And right now, let's add another $2 to our growing jackpot. That brings us up to a grand total of $121. Stand by. We'll be making another cash call. >> Rebel Rouser rousing you out of that sack here on a Are you still in bed at 8 in the morning? Come on. I'm at him. Cash call on the WP cash call line. We have phone Mrs. Clarence Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton says she's very elated we called her and she's all ready to play the game. >> Me too. Big D degree. Number one song. You're on your number one for winning station WDRC. The Beatles sing let it be. Mrs. Hamilton, do you know the current amount of contest cash in the cash call jackpot? >> No. No thanks. I'm guess I'm not interested. Bye. [Music] >> W. I'll tell you one thing that ain't like any of the people that live on that block that I live on in Rocky Hill. [Music] >> A city can be more than a place to work. How much more depends on its people, on each one of us, and on what we choose to see when we look at a city. Do we see only the problems? Or can we look more closely and see also that a city is a place full of unbuilt possibilities? [Music] Oh, hey. [Music] bounded on the north by Church Street, on the south by Asylum venue on the west by Anne Street and on the east by Trumbull Street. This is the site of the new Hartford Civic Center. The extent of the development to occur here is the result of an unprecedented joining together of public and private resources. Scheduled for completion in mid1 1972, the complex will include a 10,000 seat coliseum, a large exhibition hall, on-site parking, an outdoor public commons, and an enclosed mall featuring restaurants, movie theaters, a wide variety of shops, and welle equipped facilities for a broad range of community services. In addition, a 23-story office building will be erected on the southeast corner of the site. The extraordinary diversity and concentration of these buildings will create a city within a city, a unique environment tailored to the pedestrian and offering a full range of activities 24 hours a day. [Music] [Applause] [Music] into the middle. [Applause] [Applause] There you go. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Oh, hey. [Music] Much has gone into the development of the Civic Center site and much will come out of it. The civic center will be a financial shot in the arm, bringing an increased cash flow and its advantages to all the people of Hartford. Some specific economic benefits are these. The civic center will be self-supporting and will in addition produce a good deal of extra revenue for the city. It will attract the purchasing power of the suburbs back to the downtown area. It will result in greatly increased convention trade as well as in community oriented activities. It will create many new jobs both at the site itself and throughout the downtown area. It will stimulate other new building and construction. And it will raise the real estate value of the land surrounding the site, thus expanding the tax base and generating significant new funds for other urban redevelopment projects. [Music] The civic center becomes even more exciting when you take a broader view and think of what larger developments it can lead to. Experience in other cities has shown that no project is an island unto itself. A city is not a collection of single buildings. A city is a set of related human activities. The civic center itself points to the need for a comprehensive areawwide approach to city planning. The need, for example, to plan now for the best way to handle the increased flow of people and cars that will come to the civic center site. And it is when you take such an overall view of the city that the potential of the civic center to act as a catalyst becomes most apparent. The civic center can be a magnet, a centrallylo force that pulls together other downtown areas, whether they're residential, cultural, or commercial. The civic center is a logical focal point, not only because of the diversity of life and activity it will contain, but because it will be an example of the kind of environment that could be extended throughout the city. The compactness of Hartford's downtown area presents a unique opportunity to think in terms of creating a walking environment, a city where the pedestrian would be king, where people could travel casually on foot throughout the central business district via a system of walkways running from a new transportation center at one end of town to Constitution Plaza at the other. Such a system would eliminate any conflict between people and cars since each would have its own right ofway. Ample parking areas could be located at convenient spots between the walkways and the expressways, completing the link between the car oriented suburbs and the pedestrianoriented city through a coordinated effort. There are many directions in which the city can grow and develop. The important thing is that the new civic center has been designed to offer extreme flexibility, thus permitting it to play a major role in Hartford's redevelopment plans. The essential consideration of any urban redevelopment program must be the needs of the people. The fact that the Hartford Civic Center will attract everybody, involve everybody, and benefit everybody is what ensures its success. The civic center will provide a variety of new experiences and a place for people to come together. This prospect for the future is something pleasant to think about the next time you take a short walk to Trumble Street. Heat. Heat.