Parkville junkyard a Hartford goldmine
Abandoned junkyard near Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood now owned by the city could hold key to major redevelopment
An abandoned scrap metal yard on Flatbush Avenue now owned by the city is being eyed for a major redevelopment project in Hartford.
For decades, the scrap metal yard on Flatbush Avenue in Hartford was a familiar — if not ugly — landmark for drivers passing by on I-84 near the West Hartford line, a heaping pile of castoff appliances and machine parts. Today, the junk is gone and overhead cranes stand idle, more than a decade after the scrap yard’s closing. But Wednesday, the city took control of the 34-acre property — the city’s largest tract of land ripe for redevelopment — in a foreclosure for unpaid property taxes. The city has already begun planning for what could become a major project with residential, commercial and industrial incubator space.
The development, which would likely be constructed in phases, would build on the revitalization efforts already underway in the nearby Parkville neighborhood. Those include arts, cultural and entertainment spaces, incubator space, the addition of new apartments, the opening of a full-service grocery store and the Parkville Market.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said the old scrap metal yard’s proximity to I-84, the busway and to the Bartholomew Avenue corridor in Parkville makes the property strategically important. The property fits well with a plan for the city that included the Parkville Arts and Innovation District as one of the 10 projects that could transform the city by the time Hartford reaches its 400th anniversary in 2035.
“We want this piece of land to be part of it,” Bronin said. “We’ve had
our eyes on this parcel for years and have long hoped that we might have the ability to control its future and position it for future development.”
The city expects to hire a consultant this fall to start formulating a redevelopment plan, and then, developers would need to be chosen. One key consideration will be the contamination on the property since it was an industrial site for decades. Cleanup could cost millions of dollars, and at least some of that price tag would require public funding, such as from the state’s brownfield remediation program.
Bronin said he could not speculate on how long it might take to fully develop the property, or how much it might cost.
“Any large-scale economic development requires a lot of work and time,” Bronin said. “But it is our responsibility to identify those long-term opportunities that can be game-changers for the city and start down the path of making that happen.”
The former scrap metal yard runs between Flatbush and Bartholomew avenues and could connect the two thoroughfares, long desired by the neighborhood. The site is also across Flatbush from the Charter Oak Marketplace shopping center and within sight of the Apple Cinemas, the former Bow-Tie Cinemas, on New Park Avenue.
Over the town line in West Hartford, one “transit-oriented” development of mixed-income apartments on New Park Avenue along the busway has been built and a second is under construction.
The Bronin administration has been watching the scrap yard property for five years, and prior administrations have expressed interest in the property going back to the late 2000s.
The scrap metal business, which traced its roots in the city to 1899 and the old Suisman & Blumenthal metal recyclers, moved to a new location in the North Meadows in 2010.
Longtime city arts patron Michael Suisman had already sold the business by the time of the move. But Suisman kept ownership of the property because he also saw development potential. Suisman worked with the city, but a deal never came together with a developer. Suisman died in 2016.
Just before the pandemic hit, the city filed for foreclosure with unpaid property taxes that eventually topped $3 million. The foreclosure was held up because the courts were closed and the matter was not resolved until Wednesday when the city was given the keys to the property.
Walking through the site Thursday, the ruins of the recycling plant that helped solidify Suisman as a philanthropist are all-around.
The former office is almost completely obscured by saplings that have grown up. A half-dozen buildings that once handled different aspects of recycling are pocked with broken windows and tagged with graffiti. Asphalt driveways are cracked, with weeds and wildflowers pushing their way up. The property is now so wooded that two deer sauntered by near an abandoned building.
It wasn’t always this way. Glenn Geathers, a longtime member of the city’s development department, remembers well-maintained
grounds when his father worked at the plant in the 1970s and his family lived nearby at the Rice Heights public housing complex.
“All this overgrown brush wasn’t here,” Geathers said, showing visitors around the property. “They kept the property up. They kept clear lines of sight. This company supported a lot of families for a very long time. It fed a lot of families, paid a lot of mortgages and put a lot of kids through college.
“Now, we’ve come full circle, and it can be something again.”