Smaller Projects Fuel City Boom
Public Subsidies, Millennials Help
Hartford’s last real estate boom changed the city’s skyline, with the Hartford 21 tower reaching new heights and a massive convention center rising up beside the river.
The recent boom is less dramatic to the naked eye. Many of the projects underway slip more seamlessly into the existing cityscape.
But it would be a mistake to confuse drama with impact. There are more than two dozen developments underway in the city — from restorations of historic factories to the rethinking of downtown neighborhoods, the
addition of hundreds of apartments and a new regional campus for UConn. Collectively, they have the power to reshape Hartford in a way that promises to position it for growth in an era when cities nationwide are flourishing.
Bolstered by hefty public subsidy, the spate of current development is capitalizing on a movement fueled by millennials and retiring baby boomers who don’t want to devote the time and money to maintaining a home in the suburbs.
The Courant has launched an interactive feature that includes dozens of developments with the potential to change the city, moving it closer to the elusive revitalization sought for decades. The database will be updated and expanded as new projects arise.
Developers initially targeted vacant downtown structures, from the modest, historic buildings along Elm Street to soaring edifices, such as the former bank tower on Main Street that made an undesirable statement when cloaked in darkness.
“Getting all these empty buildings back in service makes the street feel better,” said Brian Kohn, part of a partnership that bought the Goodwin Square office tower in 2015 and renovated it. “The recovery is still nascent, but it is happening.”
The building-by-building approach has given way to more long-term and expansive efforts in areas like the one around The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, the downtown gateway at Park and Main streets and perhaps the most prominent, a new neighborhood at the northern tip of downtown.
Kohn, who is considering other investments in the city, said the decision to keep health insurer Aetna Inc. headquartered in Hartford for at least another decade is a big plus.
“All signs are positive, but I wouldn’t be exuberant at this point,” Kohn said. “The city and the state need to get and keep their financial house in order.”
In a city that threatened to seek bankruptcy protection before a state bailout came through, Kohn also pointed to increases in real estate assessments that have burdened commercial property owners with even higher tax rates.
“You have to be careful. ... You really want to keep attracting businesses because they will bring more people into the city,” Kohn said. “It will help housing and everything will flow from that.”
There are other uncertainties on the horizon, including the outcome of a gubernatorial race in November. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has been an ardent supporter of Hartford, but whether that will remain a priority for his successor is unclear.
While there has been praise for investment downtown, some say more must be done in the neighborhoods. Developers are beginning to push beyond the central business district, with the renovation of the historic M. Swift & Sons factory, the Parkville Market redevelopment and the Albany Avenue streetscape.
“Focusing on the downtown, focusing on the anchor institutions like UConn, is one way things have been done,” said Phil Birge-Liberman, assistant professor of urban and community studies at UConn’s Hartford campus. “But that can’t be everything. Going out into the communities and developing in some of the neighborhoods that are in need of assistance – a spark to help reignite some investment – that’s where the city needs to move.”
Developers, particularly from New York, have taken a keen interest in Hartford, where real estate is less costly than in Boston or New York City.
One of the first was a partnership of Girona Ventures and Wonder Works Development and Construction. In 2011, the partners purchased their first building, the decaying Sonesta Hotel on Constitution Plaza. The old structure was converted into 190 apartments as part of a $24 million project, which started renting in 2015 and is now 96 percent occupied.
Since then, the partners have moved on to renovations at 95-101 and 111 Pearl St., two derelict buildings near the corner of Trumbull Street. They are converting the buildings into 258 market-rate rentals, most of them studio apartments. The units, a $50 million development, are expected to begin leasing in the spring.
The partners have also bought the former Trumbull on the Park building, with plans for more renovations.
Jeffrey D. Ravetz, president of Girona Ventures, said he and his partner, Joseph Klaynberg of Wonder Works, remain as upbeat about Hartford’s prospects as they were in 2011, maybe more so.
“You walk the streets, there are people,” Ravetz said. “There seems to be more activity. It certainly is better than it was.”
But he quickly adds: “We need more people living downtown, more 24-hour people.”
Downtown Hartford had nearly 1,500 apartments and a vacancy rate hovering between 3 percent and 4 percent before the recent construction wave. Since 2015, the downtown has added 885 rentals that included funding from The Capital Region Development Authority.
Another 551 units are in progress and 110 more are on the drawing board, for a total of 1,546, according to CRDA, a quasi-state agency created, in part, to increase marketrate apartment units in the city.
So far, demand seems to be holding up with overall occupancy in completed projects averaging 95 percent or better, CRDA says.
Ravetz said there is more of an appetite among investors — some of them from outside the United States — to put money into Hartford apartment conversions than there was in 2011.
“The list is longer,” he said. “We had many more options on the Pearl Street project than we did on Constitution Plaza. More sources of financing are interested in being involved.”
That is a good sign, since the ultimate goal is to back off from public subsidies and let private investors take the lead, said Melvyn Colon, an urban and global studies professor at Trinity College and a member of the city’s planning and zoning commission.
“The point of all this is to get the private market to work, for investment to work on its own,” said Colon, who is the head of the Southside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance.
Colon pointed to the block of Capitol Avenue between Lawrence and Babcock streets as an example that has emerged, on a modest scale, in the city. Businesses there include Red Rock Tavern, Story and Soil coffee shop, Capital Ice Cream, Bahn Meee and Little River Restoratives. In addition, Aaron Gill and his wife, Maja Gill, renovated a dilapidated, six-unit apartment building at the center of the block.
“Here’s an example of real investment that’s driven by private investors,” Colon said, “which is where we want to be.”