Hartford Business Journal

8 Hartford Business Journal • December 3, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com Reporter's Notebook Gregory Seay | gseay@HartfordBusiness.com Real Estate, Economic Development/Construction, Banking & Finance and Manufacturing ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Hartford's other Main Street development block S itting just blocks from Dunkin' Donuts Park and surface park- ing lots comprising Hartford's Downtown North quadrant, is a cluster of buildings fronting Main Street that some city and development officials see as ripe for recasting. Patrick McMahon, CEO of Con- necticut Main Street Center (CMSC), a promoter of community economic de- velopment and historic preservation, says his nonprofit was retained by the Capital Region Development Author- ity (CRDA) to analyze the Main Street corridor, from Dunkin' Donuts Park to the junction of Main and High streets, where Albany Avenue begins. Despite the corridor being home to vacant tracts and 13 historic commer- cial-residential structures, many in various stages of disrepair, there is plenty of potential. It's a five-minute walk to the center of downtown, and to Bushnell Park. "The buildings are beautiful,'' McMa- hon said. "They're classic Main Street.'' Mayor Luke Bronin describes the Main Street block, which includes the Capital Preparatory Magnet School, as "an important connector'' to the ballpark and the rest of the Downtown North (DoNo) quadrant, which is slated for a $200 million mixed-use development led by Stamford developer RMS Cos. Hartford architect-entrepreneur William W. Crosskey II, who partnered with CMSC in assessing the Main Street corridor — which has been branded as the "Arrowhead" develop- ment — says ongoing and proposed redevelopment in and around DoNo is spurring interest in properties in ad- jacent blocks heading west along Main Street and Albany Avenue. "It's more the ballfield that's made the difference in interest in this area,'' Crosskey said. However, redevelopment challenges exist. First, many of the buildings, which were erected between 1882 and 1902, are individually owned, making coordinated improvement efforts dif- ficult. Also, the forlorn exterior facades of some of the Main Street buildings reflect landlords' lack of investment in some of the prop- erties, observers say, many of which house streetfront retail and living spaces above. One of the biggest and most visible properties, the Arrowhead building, named for an ex-café ten- ant, overlooks the city's Public Safety Complex that oc- cupies a converted former city Board of Education building. The city is preparing to foreclose on the building at 1355 Main St., to satisfy property-tax liens, McMahon said. Next door is a vacant, trian- gular-shaped property, known as the Flatiron building, at 529 Ann Uccello St. One option is to aggregate within several years the Arrowhead and sur- rounding properties into one attrac- tive parcel for an "infill'' mixed-use development, McMahon said. A catalytic project for the block is the rehab of 1279-1283 Main St., which is owned by the San Juan Center. The proj- ect aims to turn the mixed-use property into 10, one-bedroom apartments and street-front retail and it would be fi- nanced by a mix of tax credits and loans, including CRDA financing. The thinking goes, once renovation work begins on that project, it will signal to neighboring property owners that successful build- ing renovations can happen. According to McMahon, CRDA re- ceived $4 million from the state Bond Commis- sion to fund loans to eligible Main Street landlords for property im- provements. That money is apart from CMSC's $1 million "Come Home to Down- town'' loan fund that is open to pri- vate and nonprofit landlords-devel- opers to convert eligible properties into affordable and market-rate hous- ing in Hartford and seven other Connecticut com- munities, McMa- hon said. So far, he said, $227,000 in CMSC funds has been lent to five projects — two of them in Hartford's North End. Crosskey says CRDA's property- improvement loan pool aims to help Main Street-block landlords improve their buildings' storefronts and convert vacant or underused upper-level space to living quarters. Doing so, Crosskey says would enable landlords to leverage more revenue from their properties, money to pay property taxes and that can be reinvest- ed in maintaining them long term. CITY GOVERNMENT Hartford hikes building-permit fees I t now costs more to build or reno- vate space in Hartford. In August, the city's licenses and inspections division posted in its Main Street office and online its registry of new and higher filing, site-review and land-use fees for more than six dozen permitted uses that the City Council adopted in early July. So far, none of Hartford's more active suburban neighbors has aired plans to follow suit and raise their building and permitting fees. According to Kiley Gosselin, now the city's former acting director of devel- opment services, some of the city's building fees had not been updated in more than a decade. Others had been on the books unchanged perhaps longer, Gosselin said. "We were talking about doing this for quite a while,'' Gosselin said. The city surveyed neighboring communities' building fees and found many of its fees to be slightly lower than theirs, she said. For instance, the city's building- permit fee doubled from $25 to $50 for the first $1,000 of construction costs, and $30 for each $1,000 of value there- after. It now costs $125 for a certificate of occupancy. Building officials in West Hartford and Windsor, two suburban com- munities where new commercial and residential construction and renova- tion have been brisk in recent years, say they have no immediate plans to raise building fees. Kiely said the city sent out public notices in July to the builder-devel- oper community statewide, alerting them to the new fees. The city "saw a flash of filings'' right before the new fees took effect, but the building community's response to them was muted, she said. Finally, Gosselin said the City Council undertook several changes to its city-ordinance structure, to allow future fee-pricing reviews/updates to occur more easily and often. Hartford's Arrowhead redevelopment Here are Connecticut Main Street Center's recom- mendations to the city of Hartford and Capital Region Development Authority for redeveloping the 13 buildings just outside Hartford's Downtown North quadrant fronting Main Street. Acquire 180 Pleasant St. for site control and adaptive reuse analysis ($375,000) Acquire Arrowhead building, 1355 Main St., and assemble nearby vacant lots to pave way for mixed-use development ($1.7M) Rehab 1293 Main St. ($560,000) Rehab 529 Ann Uccello St. (Flatiron building, ($318,000) Make façade improvements to nine buildings ($1.5 million) Make parking and streetscape improve- ments along Ann Uccello St. ($631,800) Make short-term streetscape improve- ments along Main Street ($63,000) The Arrowhead (left) and Flatiron (right) buildings occupy a key piece of Main Street real estate in Hartford. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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