A new boost for ‘Bushnell Park South’
Proposed $63M project would convert historic Hartford office building into apartments, co-working space, restaurant
The former state office building on Hartford’s Pulaski Circle across from Bushnell Park would be converted into apartments, co-working space and a restaurant in a $63 million proposed project that would mark a significant step forward in redeveloping the barren expanse near The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts. The conversion of the historic, 1926 edifice at 55 Elm St. won approval Friday from the Capital Region Development Authority’s housing and neighborhood committee for $13.5 million in state taxpayer-backed loans. CRDA’s full board is expected to vote on the financing later this month, but the State Bond Commission must then approve borrowing the funds for the project.
If the CRDAboard approves the project, it is unclear how quickly the bond commission might consider the project, especially since Gov. Ned Lamont, the chairman of the commission, has held commission meetings infrequently. Lamont came into office in 2019 pledging to cut back on bonding.
The project’s developer, Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, of South Norwalk, purchased the five-story building — once the offices of the state attorney general, comptroller and others — a little over a year ago for $6.8 million. The purchase price included three adjacent parking lots.
Spinnaker plans 164 apartments, with the possibility that up to 70 would be built so that they could be used as hotel rooms, should booking demand return. The COVID-19 pandemic has battered the hospitality industry in the city, state and across the country.
The 55 Elm conversion is part of the larger “Bushnell Park South” targeting the sea of parking lots near The Bushnell theaters for a mixed-used development of housing, offices, shops and restaurants, unfolding over years. The area is bisected by Capitol Avenue.
CRDAis in the midst of a planning study for the area. A$16 million, publicly financed parking garage — part of a future “district parking plan” — is nearing completion just east of the Presbyterian church on Capitol Avenue.
“55 Elm is a beautiful and historic building that sits on one of the most prominent and central locations in downtown Hartford,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, a member of CRDA’s housing committee, said. “As the state has transitioned employees out of that building, it is time to give that building a new life. It also plays an important role in
the broader redevelopment of that sea of surface parking lots that sits behind it.”
The larger area is seen as providing a connection among Bushnell Park, the redevelopment at Park and Main streets and ultimately, Colt Park and the national historical park planned for the former Colt gun manufacturing complex.
Bronin said there is much urgency to the 55 Elm conversion now that the pandemic has emptied office buildings in the downtown and raised questions about what the demand will be in the future, as more office employees work at home.
“It adds all the more urgency and importance to the work of creating residential density in the center of our city,” Bronin said. “Hartford had tremendous momentum and success in converting empty office space and repositioning long vacant building coming into this pandemic.
“Coming out of this pandemic, we have to make sure we continue that work with a greater sense of urgency because it’s important to the economic strength and vibrancy of the capital city,”
The apartments at 55 Elm would be mixed-income, with 80% market rate and 20% affordable to low- and moderate-income tenants.
The 55 Elm project would become the centerpiece of a new block, eventually surrounded by new apartment buildings replacing two of the parking lots — one on Capitol Avenue, the other on West Street. The new apartment buildings would have about 80 units each and the entire block would be interconnected with courtyards and walkways.
Spinnaker’s plans for 55 Elm mark its second major project in and around downtown Hartford. The developer is now completing the first phase of the $26 million, mixed-use development at Park and Main.