Hartford exploring revival of sluggish downtown corridor

HARTFORD — The city of Hartford is drawing up a new vision for its Main Street corridor, the first step to rebuilding the road from the Old State House downtown to the harried intersection around Barnard Park.

The effort, called Re-Imagining Main Street, had just kicked off with its first meeting in early March, when an advisory committee sat down in City Hall just before COVID-19 forced shutdowns across the state. They discussed the perceived challenges of Main Street and the sections of the corridor they’d like to activate, like the Calder Sculpture

plaza, a barren, raised platform that’s invisible from the street.

Similar issues were raised in the first public listening sessions, held Thursday over Zoom.

About 50 people — residents, business and property owners, workers and agency representatives — learned there have been 62 bicycle and pedestrian crashes and 338 vehicle crashes on that stretch of Main Street in the past three years, two of them fatal. And they attested to what’s plain to the eye: the corridor doesn’t make things easy for pedestrians and transit riders, and it doesn’t feel

particularly welcoming or safe.

“I end up having to walk all the way to the North End because why wait 30 minutes outside Travelers?” Hartford resident Kathleen Maldonado, a daily bus rider, said. “Some of the connections just don’t make sense.”

Street conditions also deteriorate as Main Street heads south and turns into Maple and Wethersfield, locals said. The too-wide expanse of pavement and long stretches without storefronts make for an uncomfortable walk, especially at night.

“I’ve never been bothered, but others I know get catcalled there or propositioned every time they walk by,” said Anthony Cherolis, who coordinates Transport Hartford for the Center for Latino Progress. “The new apartments should help fill that gap.”

Stantec, the project consultant for Re-Imagining Main Street, polled participants and found 95 percent rated the quality of Main Street as average or poor.

The biggest safety problems, they said, are poor pedestrian crossings and speeding vehicles. Seventy percent said what Main Street needed most was more local restaurants or retail shopping.

“I think a large challenge is bringing the streets to life with street vendors, artists, places to congregate,” said retiree John Simone, former president and CEO of Connecticut Main Street Center.

Why, for example, should there be a fence around the shady green in front of the Old State House, Simone asked.

More than a third of participants said they would walk more on Main Street if it felt safer or more inviting. Even more, however — 52% — said they just needed something worth walking to.

“Main Street could use better lighting, more trees, more places just to be,” said Jackie Mandyck, executive director of the iQuilt Partnership, an urban design plan for downtown. “People want a place to just be. Chat. have a cup of coffee outside.”

People can also share input by taking a survey on the Re-Imagining Main Street website.

The effort has been in the works since 2017, when the city applied for a state grant for transit-oriented development.

With 2,200 buses traveling the downtown artery, it was the obvious candidate for a top-tobottom redesign as what’s known as a “complete street,” serving not just drivers but all users: pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, children, seniors and people with disabilities.

The city only received partial funding, $250,000, enough to develop a design concept for its new Main Street.

It will take another $1.5 million to design and build the road, said Sandra Fry, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator and project manager for Re-Imagining Main Street.

The bigger picture

Re-Imagining Main Street is one of the first elements of a broader effort to design streets not just for cars but for all users, including pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, children, senior citizens and people with disabilities.

Where currently only 8% of local streets are bike friendly, a bicycle master plan the city adopted last June recommends a network of separated lanes, shared roads and side paths to encourage and protect cyclists

Some residential streets may also be converted down the road into bike boulevards, or what Boston calls “neighborways” — low-speed streets that discourage through-traffic from cars.

Building that network is now part of the city’s 10-year plan, adopted May 12. And under the Complete Streets Ordinance the city passed in 2016, all streets must be designed with all users in mind.

Hartford had also hoped rental bikes would return to the city this spring through an agreement with Zagster, a Boston-based bike and electric scooter-share company. A pilot program with San Francisco-based Lime ended in early 2019 after less than a year in service.

However, Zagster and some other micromobility companies have suspended rentals during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also delayed Zagster’s move into the Hartford region, according to Fry.

“Everything that happened since March has set that back a little bit but the city is really committed,” Fry said.

Next steps

A three-day public design workshop is planned for July, and a public open house in September will offer cost estimates and information on the implementation of the project.

The project consultant, Stantec, will finish its work by the end of the year, and the city will put the project out for bid and seek additional grants to fund it. Design would take another year and a half, and construction a couple of years, Fry said.

There is no city money behind the project aside from staff time.

“I think the design concept will present a vision that really intrigues and excites people and gives it the energy to move forward,” she said. “If everything just went one after the other, within five years you would have the new road.”

Fry previously worked for the Capital Region Council of Governments, in a Main Street building she had to enter through a rear parking lot because the landlord kept the front door locked.

It’s that kind of behavior she hopes will change once the city realizes its new vision for Main Street.

“I joked to someone from CRCOG, ‘I think one of our goals should be for your building owner to feel they could unlock the front door,’ ” Fry said after Thursday’s first listening session. “That the street is active enough that they don’t have to worry.”

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.