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When did your city hit rock bottom?


Carter711

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The general trend with Northeastern cities on the rise seems to be that they once boomed, then began to decline, declined even more before hitting rock bottom, and then started to become 'rediscovered' and begin to prosper and rezitalize themselves and boom once again. So what's your city's story? What was the worst period for your city and what events symbolized just how bad things had become during those most difficult days?

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I say for Hartford it was April of 1997. That was the month the Whalers left town and headed south. Up until them, although Hartford had been through some very tough times, we always had the Whalers to fall back on. Regardless of the situation, they made us a "major city". Once they left, people felt abandoned, depressed, and the true problems of the city finally came to the surface.

The silver lining, of course, is that soon after they skipped town, the state of CT and city of Hartford finally realized that a plan needed to be developed to revitalize Hartford and bring us back to our formy glory. That plan was envisioned a year later in 1998, and the full fledged revitalization of the city began in 2001/2002 with the Convention Center breaking ground.

Now, 4 years later, the future looks very bright, with lots of major challenges still to come.

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I say for Hartford it was April of 1997. That was the month the Whalers left town and headed south. Up until them, although Hartford had been through some very tough times, we always had the Whalers to fall back on. Regardless of the situation, they made us a "major city". Once they left, people felt abandoned, depressed, and the true problems of the city finally came to the surface.

The silver lining, of course, is that soon after they skipped town, the state of CT and city of Hartford finally realized that a plan needed to be developed to revitalize Hartford and bring us back to our formy glory. That plan was envisioned a year later in 1998, and the full fledged revitalization of the city began in 2001/2002 with the Convention Center breaking ground.

Now, 4 years later, the future looks very bright, with lots of major challenges still to come.

I agree. The Whaler's leaving in 1997 pretty much left Hartford at it's lowest point possible.

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For Manchester, historically the lowest point was probably 1935, when the Amoskeag Manufacturing Co., the company that literally built the city, declared bankruptcy, leaving over eight million square feet of textile mill space vacant.

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More recently, the economic downturn and real estate crash of the early 90's hit Manchester particularly hard. In one single day, 4 of the state's 5 largest banks - all headquartered on Elm Street, failed. The front page of the paper the next day screamed "Nightmare on Elm Street." The city started to pick up in the late 90's with the millyard establishing itself as a high tech center. When the Civic Center opened in 2000, downtown prospered as a night-spot for the first time in decades with dozens of new restaurants and bars. Manchester is still 'rough around the edges,' but it has come a long way.

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  • 3 months later...

Most of New England crashed with the stockmarket of 1929 and then died slowly through the 50's and beyond. It's never been the same in NE since. Many cities have come back, but Boston is probably the only city and metro that regained or surpassed its stature prior to the crash.

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  • 3 months later...

Pittsburgh's "rock bottom" could've happened in any one of the following years:

1983 - most jobs lost of any year during the steel collapse

1993 - the end of the steel collapse

2003 - Pittsburgh becomes "distressed" city requiring budget oversight by the state; elderly population peaks

From the darkest hour comes the light...

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Worcester has been in a slow decline ever since the late 50s. In my lifetime, probably the worst idea was opening up the Common Outlets. Granted, it's nice to have parking for the Centrum... but the Outlets and the parking garages are just ugly as sin and take up way too much downtown space. Thank God it's going away really soon.

Quite a few neighborhoods along Main St have been going to hell lately too. But at least other parts of town have been getting better.

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