Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com August 22, 2016 • Hartford Business Journal 15 zoning and building departments. Stewart said the "end game'' for the city's redevelopment blueprint is to add to and expand the overall value of its real estate grand list in order to spread and minimize the tax bur- den on local property owners. After avoiding a tax hike a year earlier, New Britain was forced to raise this year's mill rate due to state cuts in municipal aid and smaller collections in lieu of taxes on properties the state owns in New Britain, Stewart said. But amid all the new and planned con- struction and renovation, New Britain faces another, perhaps even bigger challenge, said Carroll, the chamber official. "Downtown needs feet on the street," he said. This summer, Carroll and Stewart say they've noticed more people congregating in the city's revamped former town green. Brick pavers and bright plantings now frame the area, where most days downtown visitors can ply any of several parked food trucks. A farm- er's market occupies the same green space other days, Carroll said. The presence of Cen- tral Connecticut State University's (CCSU) downtown campus on Main Street has helped boost downtown's pedestrian traffic. The pair of highways linking New Britain to all four corners of the state potentially now are gateways to bring visitors, tourists and workers into the Hardware City, Carroll said. New Britain's existing downtown landlords welcome the fresh players. New York developer Avner Krohn says that in the last decade he has purchased and overhauled five properties totaling about 110,000 square feet of housing, office and retail space — an investment totaling $9 million to $10 million. His latest underway is the conversion by fall of a former Taco Bell into an AFC/Doctors Express clinic. Next spring, Krohn breaks ground in the city on a medical-office building. "I look at downtown [New Britain] as a unique version of what Middletown was 10 years ago,'' Krohn said. Empty storefronts that once lined Middletown's Main Street cor- ridor are now filled, mostly with restaurants, and anchored by the police station, he said. New Britain's transition mirrors Middle- town's in that it began with the relocation of the police station to a more visible stretch of Main Street downtown. Like Middletown, New Brit- ain, too, is home to a college — CCSU — that each semester draws about 200 pupils, faculty and staff daily to its satellite Main Street campus. Through a spokeswoman, CCSU says it sup- ports redevelopment of downtown New Britain and continues to consider options for expanding its presence there. In the past three years, CCSU says it has relocated about a dozen entities — including internal auditing, continuing educa- tion and the CCSU Foundation — from its main campus to space it owns and rents downtown. According to Ian Fishkin, in-house gen- eral counsel to New York developer Henry Justin, who owns The Plaza office tower (formerly ACMAT Plaza), 233-235 Main St. downtown, the landlord has pressed CCSU to relocate its art department to his building. "They think it's a great idea,'' Fishkin said. "But like everything with the state, it's a process. They understand the need for people downtown.'' Downtown New Britain's nascent transi- tion, he said, is akin to the evolution that took root, also led by the arts community, in New York City's Manhattan-Soho and Brooklyn- Williamsburg neighborhoods decades ago. "Without people on the streets, it's all for naught," Fishkin said. "We want people. We want corporations. … There's no reason downtown can't be great again, especially with CTfastrak.'' n Avner Krohn is retail landlord of these spaces (clockwise from left) along West Main Street; The Hatch Building; and the former police station site that will house the $58 million Columbus Commons residential-commercial development. 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