Demolition of vacant and decaying CT building to start. It puts future development in spotlight.
An 8-foot high construction fence is starting to
encircle the
former data processing center.
It’s near Hartford’s minor
league ballpark, the first step toward a demolition that would make space
for new development — including a potential, $90 million center for applied
artificial intelligence.
But passersby won’t notice walls tumbling down right away.
Over the next two months or so, work will focus inside the
190,000-square-foot, bunker-like structure — vacant for nearly two decades and
long the target of vandals and the object of thieves
who stripped the concrete structure of anything of value.
“What people will be able to see probably won’t start until
April or May,” William Diaz, a project manager for the city’s department of
development services, said. “Everything has to go down to the studs before they
start taking the building down.”
Diaz said metal structural beams, for instance, are sprayed
with asbestos, which must be removed, and the lowest two underground floors are
flooded.
Leveling the now, city-owned data center is expected to cost
$9.4 million, a combination of state and city funds, including a $6 million
brownfields clean-up grant. The demolition is expected to wrap up by June 1,
according to the city’s latest predictions.
The redevelopment plans for the nearly 3-acre parcel include
the AI center, a $30 million, 120-room boutique hotel and 200-space parking
garage. The developer would be Stamford-based RMS Cos., which is leading the
construction of apartments around Dunkin’ Park, just north of the heart of
downtown.
It is likely that construction on the hotel and parking garage would begin first, followed by the AI center.
The city of Hartford hopes that a major portion of the
funding for the AI center will come from the
state’s Innovation Clusters program, designed to promote the expansion
of next-generation technology in Connecticut. In turn, the technology is seen
as driving future economic development and job growth.
In September, the
state awarded $50.5 million to New Haven from the clusters program to
build on its aspirations to become a major center for the life sciences
industry and emerging quantum technology. The latter is seen as changing the
capabilities of computers and research.
At the time of the award, Daniel O’Keefe, the state’s
commissioner of economic and community development, said Hartford and Stamford
— the remaining two of the three finalist cities seeking cluster funding were
still very much in the running.
“We have been working very closely with them on the details
of this very large project,” Jeff Auker, Hartford’s director of development
services, said. “We submitted updates to them right before the holidays and
they are under review right now.”
Auker said, the city hopes to “sit down with the state and
hammer out the final details in the next days or weeks.”
Hartford’s AI aspirations could cost as much as $90 million
over five years, likely first beginning with a temporary space and then a
permanent location.
If Hartford is successful were securing cluster grant
funding, Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said he is confident that the city
would be able to line up the balance for AI Center not covered by the clusters
grant. Online
giant Google already has expressed interest in helping the applied AI
center in Hartford outfit itself with crucial, rapidly-evolving technology.
City officials have said the AI center would be separate
from what the corporations are spending on AI — estimated to be in the hundreds
of millions of dollars. But collaborations with them — especially in insurance
and health care — are absolutely foreseen, they said.
The city also isn’t focusing on the incubator space for
start-ups that could too easily relocate.
Hartford’s sweet spot is the area between the large
companies and the start-ups. This is where new ideas — some developed at
colleges and universities — are tested and worked on in a lab using digital
tools that are commercially available.
But a key part of the vision also targets training to
prepare a workforce for using AI, which many believe will be the most
consequential technology in the future, its impact even deeper than the
development of the internet.
Some, however, have expressed concerns that AI has the
potential to replace jobs, especially ones that handle more routine tasks.