Hartford Business Journal

10 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER 4, 2021 TOTAL PROJECT SIZE: 30,000 SF Building For Your Success EDGE FITNESS GLASTONBURY, CT For over 55 years, metal buildings have been a staple of PDS. For this project, we erected a new 30,000 square foot pre-engineered metal building to be used as a fitness facility for the Edge Fitness in Glastonbury CT. Standing 35' tall, this building was complete with brick veneer, CMU veneer, a mezzanine, elevator, curtain wall, storefront and more. With in-house disciplines of engineering from civil to mechanical, PDS can design the right building to fit your budget and timeline. SPOTLIGHT ON: COMMERCIAL 107 Old Windsor Road, Bloomfield, CT 06002 | 860.242.8586 | pdsec.com THINK • PLAN • BUILD latitude in terms of what we can hypothetically do with them. We feel like the best use of our resources is to find the right developers to develop those properties. I think that a developer with skin in the game is going to do a much better job than a large nonprofit that hires a general contractor. I think it will be done more efficiently and create wealth in our communities. Does Hartford have a strong enough pipeline of local developers right now? I think the difference between a really good contractor and a good developer is access to capital. I think Hartford has the talent pool but I'm not sure they think of themselves as developers and so we need to bridge that gap and create more developers in the city. Are you willing to work with non-Hartford developers? I think there is a preference to work with people based in the city but we also want to make a larger-scale impact so that is certainly not out of the question. We've got to take stock of what we have in the city first, then move outward. Are you looking to have Hartford residents who are renters become owners, or do you want people from outside the city to move in? I think we want a basket of those things but we are looking to partner with organizations that target Hartford residents who are renters and would like to purchase a property for the first time. We are also looking for people who are interested in moving into the city of Hartford. The bottom-line goal is to create more owner-occupied buildings. What has the land bank done so far? We were initially allocated seven properties from the city. Four of them have either sold or will be selling to developers in the days and weeks ahead. We have one property, on Magnolia Street, that we had to demolish because of the condition of it. Our hope is to give it to a nearby property owner on Albany Avenue, who owns a mixed-use rental property, to use it as parking. We've got one six-unit property on Holmstead Avenue that is larger and will take significant work. We put out an RFP on that but we didn't feel like any of the bidders had the capital to do the work we think it needs. So we are reaching out to other sources. There's also a single-family house on Martin Street that the land bank is going to work on. We will hire the general contractor and oversee the process. There aren't that many developers bidding on properties right now, which tells me there aren't that many people with access to capital who are able to do this work. We need to work on that. What's in the pipeline after those seven properties? The city council has voted to give us 11 vacant city-owned lots. We got those before I joined the land bank and we are working with the city on the disposition of those lots. I want to explore the feasibility of infill housing. It's clearly more expensive. Maybe if we can do something with modular units we can do something that makes sense. Beyond those 11 lots we will be working with the blight director to identify properties that are really the biggest issues in communities. So, how would you characterize your top three priorities? We need to develop a pipeline of developers because that is what is going to make this thing sustainable and allow us to scale up. Fundraising is another priority, and being able to connect developers with homeowners so developers aren't holding on to a house for too long. There's a major focus on diversity and inclusion right now in the private sector, particularly at major corporations with their philanthropy efforts. Do you view that as a potential opportunity in terms of your fundraising efforts? Yes, I hope so because I think undoing generations of systemic racism has to start with building capital in communities of color and I think this is one of the best ways we can build capital while also creating housing in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by redlining, Jim Crow and segregation. I hope this is high on people's list. On The Record | Q&A Arunan Arulampalam CEO Hartford Land Bank Education: Quinnipiac University School of Law; Emory University Age: 36

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