"We've stayed out of it because we didn't want to make it a political issue," said Congdon, who also serves as a state representative. "But I've always felt the hospital site was the best site for the school, and that door is now opened.."

Congdon and other local leaders say the Norwich City Council's Monday vote to oppose the governor's preferred location for the college at Mahan Drive opens the door for the hospital site.

Most town leaders contacted Tuesday said they preferred seeing the college at the Norwich Hospital, and seemed wary over the possibility of the college consolidating within their borders.

"You would have to know everything, the required amount of acreage, the parking, the drainage," Montville Mayor Howard "Russ" Beetham, a graduate of Three Rivers, said. "I'd love to have it here, but the Norwich Hospital site would have been the best."

East Lyme thinks it has a better site. First selectman Wayne Fraser, who said the Norwich council's decision "opened a door," drafted a letter to the governor Tuesday asking him to consider placing the college on land the town has targeted for development near Exit 74 on Interstate 95.

"I think it's a nice fit for the development we're considering at the exit," he said.

Paul Eccard, Waterford first selectman and chairman of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, said he would prefer to see the college consolidated at the hospital site. Norwich, he said, had a central location for students.

Waterford, he said, would have the capacity to host the campus, but Eccard said it was on the southern end of Three Rivers' service area.

Neither is New London. Non-profit entities occupy half the land in the city, City Manager Richard Brown said.

"We don't have a lot of developable property left," he said. "I think we are hoping for development that will have a higher yield of taxes for the community rather than another tax-exempt entity, unless somehow and for some reason that property would partner with a taxable entity."

Additional reporting by Ray Hackett