Humberto J Rocha
STAMFORD — “Hey hey, ho ho, BLT’s gotta go!” a small group of people shouted as they walked through Dyke Lane onto Washington Boulevard Saturday, past the manicured sidewalks of Harbor Point Commons Park where people were walking their dogs.Leading the pack was state Rep. David Michel, D-146th, who was calling into a megaphone as a group of about 25 South End residents, union workers and Neighborhood Revitalization Zone members followed closely behind.
“We just want to keep a nice neighborhood with a community feeling and stop the overbuilding,” Elizabeth McCauley, who has lived in the South End for 37 years, said during the gathering. “We want to focus on historic preservation, too.”
Attendees began to gather at around 1 p.m. on Woodland Avenue in what turned out to be a hot, sunny day with clear skies. Michel lead the group down to developer Building and Land Technology headquarters on Elmcroft Road with a Stamford police patrol monitoring nearby.
NRZ Vice President and longtime South End resident Sue Halpern said she was keeping an eye on Zoning Board meetings for further BLT construction applications.
“It started out very nicely,” Halpern said of BLT’s growth and development in the past decade. “Now they want a 22-story apartment building on the lot (between Woodland Avenue and Walter Wheeler Drive) where B&S Carting used to be.”
That same project is part of a civil lawsuit filed by the developer against the city’s Board of Representatives in March.
The Planning Board earlier this year had approved changes to the city’s Master Plan that would have permitted the developer to build more than 650 units on the lot.
McCauley’s 97-year-old mother, Estelle, lives in a 2.5 story century-old house on Walter Wheeler Drive. McCauley said that if the high-rise were built, her mother’s house would no longer have sunlight.An appeal from the NRZ petitioned the Board of Representatives to not make the changes to the city’s Master Plan. When the Board voted down the changes to the plan, the developer sued for what it said was an illegal petition effort. The lawsuit, according to court documents, was transferred to the Superior Court Judicial District of Hartford in May.
Ted Ferrarone, co-president of BLT, wrote via email that the company’s development in the area had revitalized the South End and brought thousands of new residents, dozens of new businesses and public events“We have built nearly 300 units of first class Below Market Rate housing, renovated historic structures, and remediated brownfields. Today we continue to build out Harbor Point in accordance with the City’s Master Plan, renovate the historic South End Firehouse, and pursue development on sites that were home to former industrial uses,” Ferrarone wrote.
Not everyone who showed up to the march was there to protest.
Al Koproski, a South End resident and Realtor, and founding member of the South End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, said he was there to see what the protesters had to say, but he thinks BLT has done much good in the region.
“I feel that BLT has done a fantastic job. There is better police protection and roadways connecting the community,” Koproski said as the gathering was getting started at Woodland Avenue.
But protesters, who held up signs that read “BLT = Better Leave Town” and “Nuestro Barrio,” Spanish for “our neighborhood” as the Harbor Point Trolley occasionally drove by, said development is going too far..
Jessica, Mendiola, 24, recently moved from the heart of the South End to neighboring Waterside. The pink sign she was carrying read “They Gentrify.”
“I saw that everything was changing, rent was going up, and I thought we should do something,” Mendiola, who lived in the South End since she was five years old, said. “Small businesses like bodegas have been shut down and it’s taking away from the community.”
The buzz is building: New Britain's Beehive Bridge on track for September debut
Catherine Shen
NEW BRITAIN - The eye-catching Beehive Bridge construction is drawing plenty of interest as it moves closer to completion.
The Main Street bridge over Route 72 is about 80 percent complete, according to David Huck, spokesman for Mayor Erin Stewart.
The contractor will be installing the pedestrian enclosure on the west side of the bridge, performing sidewalk and traffic signal work at the East Main Street/Main Street intersection, and milling and paving Main Street between Columbus Boulevard and East Main Street over the next few weeks.
The project is scheduled to be done in September and is coming in under budget, said Huck.
The $7.5 million project is part of the city’s Complete Streets Masterplan, with roughly $2 million of the money coming from the city and over $5 million supported by state and federal grants.
Other ongoing capital improvement projects include a citywide traffic signal modernization project and various traffic safety improvements throughout the city.
Stewart said in a statement that response from the public has been nothing but positive.
“Individuals see how thinking outside the box can lead to a ripple of increased activity, intrigue, and developments, all from a simple bridge rehabilitation project that was given a boost with a public art component,” she said. “The Beehive Bridge will be the first step in restoring the divide that was created when the highway was built through our city, cutting off our downtown from the Little Poland and East Main Street business districts
Gus Ververis, owner of Capitol Lunch, said the bridge reroutes more traffic and provides a way for more people to visit the local businesses.
“It’s always nice to see the city being beautified. It makes things nicer,” said Ververis, who has worked in the area for 40 years.
Fellow business owner Steve Amato of Amato’s Toy and Hobby agreed that any improvement to the cityscape is a positive thing.
“I’m seeing more people out walking around and there’ll be more interest once the bridge is finished,” he said. “I like what I’m seeing so far, it looks interesting.”
To have the bridge as a major attraction showcasing public art is something the city needs, said Gerry Amodio, executive director of the New Britain Downtown District. “It’s going to help New Britain by giving us another item that puts us on the map - we’re a poor town that people overlooked for a long time, and every positive thing needs to be marketed to show how unique and inviting our city is.”
Alderman Eva Magnuszewski echoed that having the bridge to attract tourists is beneficial for the city.
The public art scene is huge and the bridge adds to it, she said. “I drive by the bridge all the time and it looks absolutely amazing.”
Public workshop in Groton to address EB housing, transportation needs
Greg Smith
Consultants are wrapping up a study on regional housing, transit and transportation needs related to the continuing influx of Electric Boat employees. They’re calling on the public for input.
A second and final public workshop will be held Monday with the consultants hired to examine, among other things, what type of investments are needed to accommodate future EB employees and Navy personnel associated with increased submarine production.
The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Government is overseeing a Department of Defense-funded Joint Land Use Study. It’s a companion to a larger study designed to aid regional municipal planning for towns around the Naval submarine base in Groton.
The workshop starts at 7 p.m. at the Groton Municipal Building. Portion of the draft study will be available at the meeting.
“This is kind of a crucial time for public input, before they write the final report,” said Amanda Kennedy assistant director of the SECCOG.
The results of the study are due to be released in the fall and will focus on how the housing market and transportation infrastructure will be impacted, with an emphasis on Groton. The report also will make recommendations to address possible problem areas.
Population forecasts show 300,000 living in the region in 2040 compared to the roughly 269,000 here now. EB’s workforce is expected to grow from more than 17,000 to 20,000 by the mid-2020s.
Roughly 500 additional sailors and their families also will relocate to the area while construction of ballistic-missile submarines takes place at EB. The new subs will carry 15 more sailors — 150 compared to 135 on the current attack subs — and have two crews rather than one.
Bob Ross, executive director of the Connecticut Office of Military Affairs, said the study will look at the demographics of the workforce and sailors coming to the area to help determine what type of housing is needed — apartments within walking distance of work versus single-family homes with a yard and garage.
“At the end of the day, we hope to produce a road map for all the town planners in the region showing ‘this is our best guess for future demand of housing and transportation.’ We have housing demands that are going to change and we want to know what that’s going to look like,” Ross said.
Kennedy said a draft of the study indicates a need for the area to address some challenging intersections, such as Groton’s “five corners” and numerous other roadways where there are no sidewalks or inadequate sidewalks and no bike lanes.
One of the conclusions is that the amount of additional traffic to the region is “not going to be dramatic,” and in line with what local planners already are predicting and planning for, Kennedy said.
Downtown Hartford has a glut of parking lots some say could hold the key to growing the city’s grand list
Sean Teehan
At the tail-end of 2017, Hartford became one of only a handful of U.S. cities to do away with minimum-parking requirements for developers who want to construct or renovate buildings within its borders.
The move marked an aggressive step by city officials who want to transform Hartford from a commuter city that empties each day when white-collar workers leave office buildings for suburban homes, into a vibrant, walkable metropolis where more young professionals and others work, shop and live downtown.
An overabundance of surface parking lots in Connecticut’s Capital City has for decades been a drag on development, said Hartford Planning and Zoning Commission Chair Sara Bronin, one of the main proponents of no longer requiring developers to offer parking for newly built projects.
“A lot of times buildings were torn down to provide parking because of the zoning-code requirements, and now we have policies in place that will not force people to do that,” said Bronin, a UConn School of Law professor and architect who is married to Mayor Luke Bronin. “Ideally, we’d see the surface parking lots that we see in far too many places in the city be filled with buildings.”
About 17 percent of downtown Hartford’s nearly 2 square miles is occupied by parking lots, said Norman Garrick, a UConn civil engineering professor who has studied the city’s parking and transportation for more than a decade. That’s about 80 percent more land dedicated to parking than in cities with similar populations, like Cambridge, Mass., and Arlington, Va.
In addition to wasting space that could be occupied by businesses or housing, Hartford is missing out on some $20 million a year it could collect in property taxes, if buildings were constructed on the lots, according to Garrick’s research.
Nixing the city parking requirement was seen as a positive step in promoting infill development and the rehabilitation of old office buildings into new uses. But less clear is how Hartford should go about replacing more parking lots with residential or commercial development, or if demand for it even exists.
Hartford’s high property tax rate — 74.29 mills, by far the highest in the state — is a major impediment to ground-up development, and most newly built projects in the city require public subsidies and/or tax breaks.
Meantime, others say the city doesn’t have enough parking, arguing Hartford is and always will be a commuter city, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in mass-transit investment in recent years, including a new bus line and expanded rail line.
“We are the ultimate car culture,” said Hartford City Assessor John Philip. “Everybody drives in from the burbs.”
At least two major new parking garage projects are currently in the works — a $39 million, 1,007-space garage at the corner of Washington and Buckingham streets for state workers, which is nearing completion and doubling the capacity of a garage its replacing, and another $19 million garage on Clinton Street.
Ironically, both of those garages are seen as catalysts for a long-awaited development around The Bushnell Performing Arts Center that would eventually transform acres of adjacent parking lots into high-rise apartments/condos, office and retail space.
Competing with the burbs
Hartford didn’t develop its glut of center-city parking lots overnight. The city’s decadeslong move toward catering to cars tracks with a nationwide trend since car ownership became ubiquitous in post-war America, with millions of people leaving cities for the suburbs.
Hartford’s population dropped by more than 36,000 between 1970 and 2000, almost a quarter of its total inhabitants, according to state population data. During the same period, suburban towns in Greater Hartford saw significant population increases.
“It was a genuine fear that the cities were losing out to the suburbs, and the idea at the time was that we needed to be more like the suburbs in terms of having access to parking,” Garrick said.
Between 1960 and 2000, Hartford’s ratio of off-street parking to building area ballooned by 208 percent, according to one of Garrick’s studies.
Hartford is far from unique in this respect, said Jeffrey Tumlin, principal at San Francisco-based transportation planning firm Nelson/Nygaard. In an attempt to offer the same conveniences of the suburbs, cities across the country took steps to become more car-friendly, with many decimating their cityscapes.
“There are so many case studies of vibrant cities that completely destroyed their economic future by trying to suburbanize themselves,” Tumlin said. “The suburbs are always going to be able to compete for people who want suburbia; downtowns need to compete on their own strengths.”
Taxing land
While some say Hartford would be better off with less parking, figuring out how to fill empty lots is complicated.
In 2016, Hartford City Councilor John Gale advocated for a land value tax to encourage development. The idea was to make taxes on land high enough to severely reduce the profitability of parking lots.
“The goal of this is to discourage land banking,” Gale said. “[The tax would] flip taxation on its head, and say that it’s the land that has the value, and so we’re going to tax the land at a certain tax rate, and then the building that you put on it, we’ll tax at a lower rate.”
“[They’re] not willing to risk money in their hometown,” Gale said.
Philip, the city assessor, said he’s skeptical a land value tax would achieve Gale’s intended aim.
“You need demand if you are going to go out and develop parking lots, and that is why I’ve always personally been suspicious of a land value tax,” Philip said. “I don’t see that spurring development. If demand is there it will be developed. If it isn’t, it won’t.”
At the same time, ground-up development in Hartford is largely a losing proposition right now because rents for commercial or residential units aren’t high enough to cover the cost of construction, according to Michael Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), a quasi-public development agency.
Most major new developments that do happen in the city require significant public subsidies or tax breaks, in addition to other funding sources like tax credits, said Freimuth, whose organization has invested close to $100 million of bonded state taxpayer money in recent years to help finance construction of more than 1,500 apartment units downtown.
He’s currently involved in a few proposed ground-up developments. One, in Hartford’s Downtown North neighborhood in the shadow of Dunkin’ Donuts Park, aims to convert parking-lot space into a mixed-use project.
The first phase, to be developed by Stamford-based RMS Cos., calls for a $46 million investment at 1212 Main St., which will include a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use building containing 200 living units, plus 11,000 square feet of retail and 259 parking spaces.
CRDA has pledged $12 million toward the development’s first phase, which is currently on hold until the city can settle a legal dispute with a former developer.
The other project is a long-awaited 108-unit apartment and retail development on 13 acres of vacant city-owned land at the corner of Park and Main streets. South Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners and Hartford’s Freeman Cos. are the developers of that project, which will include 125 parking spaces and an $8.5 million loan from CRDA.
Freimuth is also involved with the two new parking garage projects near The Bushnell, which he said will actually benefit the city’s development ambitions by consolidating parking used by a variety of people — state workers, Bushnell patrons, visitors to state courts and offices, etc. — and then freeing up nearby surface lots that can be used for a planned mixed-use development.
It’s tough to say if the city has too much parking, Freimuth added.
“There’s always a greater concern than a reality when it comes to parking,” he said. “It generally boils down to where and at what price.”
With few exceptions (Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco), most cities of any size will need parking, Freimuth said.
Freimuth and Putnam, the commercial realty broker, agree that demand for retail and office developments is weak in Hartford. Putnam estimates that market conditions required for a new office building won’t exist for at least another decade.
The last time someone proposed a new office tower downtown was in 2008, when entrepreneur Abul Islam, CEO and founder of AI Engineers Inc., unveiled plans for a 13-story, $40 million high-rise to house his Middletown-based engineering firm and other tenants, as well as retail space. He even paid to knock down the former Broadcast House, a ‘60s-era structure that was the former studio-offices for WFSB Channel 3, to make room for his building.
Realty experts at the time said the tower would never get built. They were right. Not only was the timing bad — at the start of the Great Recession, which wreaked havoc on commercial real estate downtown — but the office vacancy rate and cost of construction were too high for the project to make sense. Islam pivoted at one point and proposed to build a new residential building instead, but the project never materialized.
That space remains a vacant lot.
Demand for residential units downtown is stronger, but again, the city’s high costs limit ground-up development, so it’s difficult to envision a significant number of new shiny apartment towers filling parking-lot space in the near term. (Apartment rents for CRDA projects are currently about $2.50 per square foot vs. $4 a square foot needed to support ground-up development.) Most CRDA-backed apartment projects that have come online so far converted old, existing office buildings into rentable, mostly market-rate living units.
Removing parking requirements from Hartford’s zoning code is a developer-friendly step, Putnam said, but it’s not nearly enough to start a development wave.
“I haven’t seen anyone put up a tower or a new building from scratch without getting som
Hartford comparisons
In his research, Garrick, the UConn professor, found several cities with populations and land areas similar to Hartford that have significantly reduced surface parking in the past few decades. And while they don’t make for perfect apples-to-apples comparisons, their stories are still relevant.
Both Arlington’s and Cambridge’s reductions were the result of decades-long efforts to favor buildings over parking and encourage the use of transportation options other than cars.
“Beginning in the 1970s we went through extensive long-range planning efforts to basically focus on transit-oriented development” around the D.C. Metro subway system, said Anthony Fusarelli, Arlington County’s assistant director of community planning housing and development. The goal, he said, was “to build the very walkable and active neighborhoods that we were seeking to achieve.”
Cambridge passed legislation in 1992 to de-emphasize driving and parking and reduce road congestion. It introduced measures like a pedestrian bicycle program, said Susanne Rasmussen, Cambridge’s director of environmental and transportation planning.
A few years later it passed another ordinance that required off-street parking owners to better manage their lots so that spaces don’t go unused, and include things like indoor bike parking to encourage cycling, Rasmussen said.
Putnam said Hartford doesn’t “have a transit system that is going to replace cars anytime soon.”
However, Hartford is trying to encourage modes of transportation other than cars, Sara Bronin said. For example, planning and zoning is looking at the possibility of setting bike-parking requirements. Plus the CTrail Hartford Line that began making trips between Springfield, Mass., and New Haven, paired with the rapid transit bus system that runs between Hartford and New Britain, make it possible for more commuters to get around without a car. Putting more resources into such transportation efforts could shift habits over time, she said.
“We need investments from the state and our regional partners to invest in public transportation as well as biking networks that can allow people to get in and out of Hartford without cars,” Bronin said. “I think many people will find that commuting in and out of Hartford using a non-personal vehicle option is much more pleasant and safer than using a personal vehicle.”
Tumlin, the transportation-planning expert, said the fact that Hartford officials are looking for ways to reduce surface parking bodes well.
“It’s the most urban place in the state,” Tumlin said. “Hartford really should be the great capital of Connecticut, and not just some weird financial center halfway between Boston and New York.”e kind of subsidy,” Putnam said. “It’s pie in the sky until you get a financially sustainable model.”
Construction begins on Oxford middle school building
MARTHA SHANAHAN
OXFORD – Construction is underway on the town’s new middle school on Great Oak Road, and the building committee chairman says the project is so far on schedule and under budget.
Town officials and workers with the construction company completing the project gathered at the construction site, between the Great Oak Middle School and Quaker Farms Elementary School, for a ceremony marking the start of the construction process.
O&G Industries, the Torrington firm hired to build the new school from scratch, has a little more than a year to finish, according to a timeline set out by the school building committee.
Oxford voters approved the $44.9 million project at a 2017 referendum. The state Department of Administrative Services has promised it will reimburse the town up to about 30% after the project is finished, school building committee chairman Bob Slie said Thursday.
The Board of Selectmen hired Construction Solutions Group of West Hartford to manage the project. The school will replace the 72-year-old Oxford Center School on Route 67.
The Great Oak building, which Slie said was built in the late 1960s as an elementary school, will revert to an elementary school housing the town’s third, fourth and fifth grades.
“It’s going back to what it was intended to be,” Slie said. “It was glaring that (it) was missing many of the components that a middle school needs.”
Kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders will attend Quaker Farms School.
Slie said the building committee will soon begin to meet with middle school staff and teachers to gather input on what furniture and equipment they should buy for the school.
“We’ll give them options and listen to what the have to say,” he said. “We’ll certainly try to get the best product for the least amount of money.”
Town officials expect the new middle school to open by the school year that begins in fall 2020.
The contractor will be installing the pedestrian enclosure on the west side of the bridge, performing sidewalk and traffic signal work at the East Main Street/Main Street intersection, and milling and paving Main Street between Columbus Boulevard and East Main Street over the next few weeks.
The project is scheduled to be done in September and is coming in under budget, said Huck.
The $7.5 million project is part of the city’s Complete Streets Masterplan, with roughly $2 million of the money coming from the city and over $5 million supported by state and federal grants.
Other ongoing capital improvement projects include a citywide traffic signal modernization project and various traffic safety improvements throughout the city.
Stewart said in a statement that response from the public has been nothing but positive.
“Individuals see how thinking outside the box can lead to a ripple of increased activity, intrigue, and developments, all from a simple bridge rehabilitation project that was given a boost with a public art component,” she said. “The Beehive Bridge will be the first step in restoring the divide that was created when the highway was built through our city, cutting off our downtown from the Little Poland and East Main Street business districts
Gus Ververis, owner of Capitol Lunch, said the bridge reroutes more traffic and provides a way for more people to visit the local businesses.
“It’s always nice to see the city being beautified. It makes things nicer,” said Ververis, who has worked in the area for 40 years.
Fellow business owner Steve Amato of Amato’s Toy and Hobby agreed that any improvement to the cityscape is a positive thing.
“I’m seeing more people out walking around and there’ll be more interest once the bridge is finished,” he said. “I like what I’m seeing so far, it looks interesting.”
To have the bridge as a major attraction showcasing public art is something the city needs, said Gerry Amodio, executive director of the New Britain Downtown District. “It’s going to help New Britain by giving us another item that puts us on the map - we’re a poor town that people overlooked for a long time, and every positive thing needs to be marketed to show how unique and inviting our city is.”
Alderman Eva Magnuszewski echoed that having the bridge to attract tourists is beneficial for the city.
The public art scene is huge and the bridge adds to it, she said. “I drive by the bridge all the time and it looks absolutely amazing.”
Public workshop in Groton to address EB housing, transportation needs
Greg Smith
Consultants are wrapping up a study on regional housing, transit and transportation needs related to the continuing influx of Electric Boat employees. They’re calling on the public for input.
A second and final public workshop will be held Monday with the consultants hired to examine, among other things, what type of investments are needed to accommodate future EB employees and Navy personnel associated with increased submarine production.
The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Government is overseeing a Department of Defense-funded Joint Land Use Study. It’s a companion to a larger study designed to aid regional municipal planning for towns around the Naval submarine base in Groton.
The workshop starts at 7 p.m. at the Groton Municipal Building. Portion of the draft study will be available at the meeting.
“This is kind of a crucial time for public input, before they write the final report,” said Amanda Kennedy assistant director of the SECCOG.
The results of the study are due to be released in the fall and will focus on how the housing market and transportation infrastructure will be impacted, with an emphasis on Groton. The report also will make recommendations to address possible problem areas.
Population forecasts show 300,000 living in the region in 2040 compared to the roughly 269,000 here now. EB’s workforce is expected to grow from more than 17,000 to 20,000 by the mid-2020s.
Roughly 500 additional sailors and their families also will relocate to the area while construction of ballistic-missile submarines takes place at EB. The new subs will carry 15 more sailors — 150 compared to 135 on the current attack subs — and have two crews rather than one.
Bob Ross, executive director of the Connecticut Office of Military Affairs, said the study will look at the demographics of the workforce and sailors coming to the area to help determine what type of housing is needed — apartments within walking distance of work versus single-family homes with a yard and garage.
“At the end of the day, we hope to produce a road map for all the town planners in the region showing ‘this is our best guess for future demand of housing and transportation.’ We have housing demands that are going to change and we want to know what that’s going to look like,” Ross said.
Kennedy said a draft of the study indicates a need for the area to address some challenging intersections, such as Groton’s “five corners” and numerous other roadways where there are no sidewalks or inadequate sidewalks and no bike lanes.
One of the conclusions is that the amount of additional traffic to the region is “not going to be dramatic,” and in line with what local planners already are predicting and planning for, Kennedy said.
Downtown Hartford has a glut of parking lots some say could hold the key to growing the city’s grand list
Sean Teehan
At the tail-end of 2017, Hartford became one of only a handful of U.S. cities to do away with minimum-parking requirements for developers who want to construct or renovate buildings within its borders.
The move marked an aggressive step by city officials who want to transform Hartford from a commuter city that empties each day when white-collar workers leave office buildings for suburban homes, into a vibrant, walkable metropolis where more young professionals and others work, shop and live downtown.
An overabundance of surface parking lots in Connecticut’s Capital City has for decades been a drag on development, said Hartford Planning and Zoning Commission Chair Sara Bronin, one of the main proponents of no longer requiring developers to offer parking for newly built projects.
“A lot of times buildings were torn down to provide parking because of the zoning-code requirements, and now we have policies in place that will not force people to do that,” said Bronin, a UConn School of Law professor and architect who is married to Mayor Luke Bronin. “Ideally, we’d see the surface parking lots that we see in far too many places in the city be filled with buildings.”
In addition to wasting space that could be occupied by businesses or housing, Hartford is missing out on some $20 million a year it could collect in property taxes, if buildings were constructed on the lots, according to Garrick’s research.
Nixing the city parking requirement was seen as a positive step in promoting infill development and the rehabilitation of old office buildings into new uses. But less clear is how Hartford should go about replacing more parking lots with residential or commercial development, or if demand for it even exists.
Hartford’s high property tax rate — 74.29 mills, by far the highest in the state — is a major impediment to ground-up development, and most newly built projects in the city require public subsidies and/or tax breaks.
“We are the ultimate car culture,” said Hartford City Assessor John Philip. “Everybody drives in from the burbs.”
At least two major new parking garage projects are currently in the works — a $39 million, 1,007-space garage at the corner of Washington and Buckingham streets for state workers, which is nearing completion and doubling the capacity of a garage its replacing, and another $19 million garage on Clinton Street.
Ironically, both of those garages are seen as catalysts for a long-awaited development around The Bushnell Performing Arts Center that would eventually transform acres of adjacent parking lots into high-rise apartments/condos, office and retail space.
Competing with the burbs
Hartford didn’t develop its glut of center-city parking lots overnight. The city’s decadeslong move toward catering to cars tracks with a nationwide trend since car ownership became ubiquitous in post-war America, with millions of people leaving cities for the suburbs.
Hartford’s population dropped by more than 36,000 between 1970 and 2000, almost a quarter of its total inhabitants, according to state population data. During the same period, suburban towns in Greater Hartford saw significant population increases.
“It was a genuine fear that the cities were losing out to the suburbs, and the idea at the time was that we needed to be more like the suburbs in terms of having access to parking,” Garrick said.
Between 1960 and 2000, Hartford’s ratio of off-street parking to building area ballooned by 208 percent, according to one of Garrick’s studies.
Hartford is far from unique in this respect, said Jeffrey Tumlin, principal at San Francisco-based transportation planning firm Nelson/Nygaard. In an attempt to offer the same conveniences of the suburbs, cities across the country took steps to become more car-friendly, with many decimating their cityscapes.
Taxing land
While some say Hartford would be better off with less parking, figuring out how to fill empty lots is complicated.
In 2016, Hartford City Councilor John Gale advocated for a land value tax to encourage development. The idea was to make taxes on land high enough to severely reduce the profitability of parking lots.
“The goal of this is to discourage land banking,” Gale said. “[The tax would] flip taxation on its head, and say that it’s the land that has the value, and so we’re going to tax the land at a certain tax rate, and then the building that you put on it, we’ll tax at a lower rate.”
Philip, the city assessor, said he’s skeptical a land value tax would achieve Gale’s intended aim.
“You need demand if you are going to go out and develop parking lots, and that is why I’ve always personally been suspicious of a land value tax,” Philip said. “I don’t see that spurring development. If demand is there it will be developed. If it isn’t, it won’t.”
At the same time, ground-up development in Hartford is largely a losing proposition right now because rents for commercial or residential units aren’t high enough to cover the cost of construction, according to Michael Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), a quasi-public development agency.
Most major new developments that do happen in the city require significant public subsidies or tax breaks, in addition to other funding sources like tax credits, said Freimuth, whose organization has invested close to $100 million of bonded state taxpayer money in recent years to help finance construction of more than 1,500 apartment units downtown.
He’s currently involved in a few proposed ground-up developments. One, in Hartford’s Downtown North neighborhood in the shadow of Dunkin’ Donuts Park, aims to convert parking-lot space into a mixed-use project.
The first phase, to be developed by Stamford-based RMS Cos., calls for a $46 million investment at 1212 Main St., which will include a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use building containing 200 living units, plus 11,000 square feet of retail and 259 parking spaces.
CRDA has pledged $12 million toward the development’s first phase, which is currently on hold until the city can settle a legal dispute with a former developer.
The other project is a long-awaited 108-unit apartment and retail development on 13 acres of vacant city-owned land at the corner of Park and Main streets. South Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners and Hartford’s Freeman Cos. are the developers of that project, which will include 125 parking spaces and an $8.5 million loan from CRDA.
It’s tough to say if the city has too much parking, Freimuth added.
“There’s always a greater concern than a reality when it comes to parking,” he said. “It generally boils down to where and at what price.”
With few exceptions (Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco), most cities of any size will need parking, Freimuth said.
The last time someone proposed a new office tower downtown was in 2008, when entrepreneur Abul Islam, CEO and founder of AI Engineers Inc., unveiled plans for a 13-story, $40 million high-rise to house his Middletown-based engineering firm and other tenants, as well as retail space. He even paid to knock down the former Broadcast House, a ‘60s-era structure that was the former studio-offices for WFSB Channel 3, to make room for his building.
Realty experts at the time said the tower would never get built. They were right. Not only was the timing bad — at the start of the Great Recession, which wreaked havoc on commercial real estate downtown — but the office vacancy rate and cost of construction were too high for the project to make sense. Islam pivoted at one point and proposed to build a new residential building instead, but the project never materialized.
That space remains a vacant lot.
Removing parking requirements from Hartford’s zoning code is a developer-friendly step, Putnam said, but it’s not nearly enough to start a development wave.
“I haven’t seen anyone put up a tower or a new building from scratch without getting som
Hartford comparisons
In his research, Garrick, the UConn professor, found several cities with populations and land areas similar to Hartford that have significantly reduced surface parking in the past few decades. And while they don’t make for perfect apples-to-apples comparisons, their stories are still relevant.
“Beginning in the 1970s we went through extensive long-range planning efforts to basically focus on transit-oriented development” around the D.C. Metro subway system, said Anthony Fusarelli, Arlington County’s assistant director of community planning housing and development. The goal, he said, was “to build the very walkable and active neighborhoods that we were seeking to achieve.”
Cambridge passed legislation in 1992 to de-emphasize driving and parking and reduce road congestion. It introduced measures like a pedestrian bicycle program, said Susanne Rasmussen, Cambridge’s director of environmental and transportation planning.
A few years later it passed another ordinance that required off-street parking owners to better manage their lots so that spaces don’t go unused, and include things like indoor bike parking to encourage cycling, Rasmussen said.
However, Hartford is trying to encourage modes of transportation other than cars, Sara Bronin said. For example, planning and zoning is looking at the possibility of setting bike-parking requirements. Plus the CTrail Hartford Line that began making trips between Springfield, Mass., and New Haven, paired with the rapid transit bus system that runs between Hartford and New Britain, make it possible for more commuters to get around without a car. Putting more resources into such transportation efforts could shift habits over time, she said.
“We need investments from the state and our regional partners to invest in public transportation as well as biking networks that can allow people to get in and out of Hartford without cars,” Bronin said. “I think many people will find that commuting in and out of Hartford using a non-personal vehicle option is much more pleasant and safer than using a personal vehicle.”
Tumlin, the transportation-planning expert, said the fact that Hartford officials are looking for ways to reduce surface parking bodes well.
Construction begins on Oxford middle school building
MARTHA SHANAHAN
OXFORD – Construction is underway on the town’s new middle school on Great Oak Road, and the building committee chairman says the project is so far on schedule and under budget.
Town officials and workers with the construction company completing the project gathered at the construction site, between the Great Oak Middle School and Quaker Farms Elementary School, for a ceremony marking the start of the construction process.
O&G Industries, the Torrington firm hired to build the new school from scratch, has a little more than a year to finish, according to a timeline set out by the school building committee.
Oxford voters approved the $44.9 million project at a 2017 referendum. The state Department of Administrative Services has promised it will reimburse the town up to about 30% after the project is finished, school building committee chairman Bob Slie said Thursday.
The Board of Selectmen hired Construction Solutions Group of West Hartford to manage the project. The school will replace the 72-year-old Oxford Center School on Route 67.
The Great Oak building, which Slie said was built in the late 1960s as an elementary school, will revert to an elementary school housing the town’s third, fourth and fifth grades.
“It’s going back to what it was intended to be,” Slie said. “It was glaring that (it) was missing many of the components that a middle school needs.”
Kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders will attend Quaker Farms School.
Slie said the building committee will soon begin to meet with middle school staff and teachers to gather input on what furniture and equipment they should buy for the school.
“We’ll give them options and listen to what the have to say,” he said. “We’ll certainly try to get the best product for the least amount of money.”
Town officials expect the new middle school to open by the school year that begins in fall 2020.