Hartford Business Journal

8 Hartford Business Journal • February 20, 2017 www.HartfordBusiness.com LIFETIME PATRONS: Aetna | Connecticut Public Television and Radio | The Hartford | Lincoln Financial Group | The Rosalyn Group | Stanley Black & Decker | Travelers | United Technologies Corporation | Voya Financial Jonathan Capehart Moderator Anjali Kumar Former Google Exec, Former Head of Social Innovation & General Counsel at Warby Parker Danny Meyer Restaurateur, Founder of Shake Shack Ezra Klein Journalist, Political Analyst, Founder & Editor of Vox.com TICKETS AND INFO: 860.509.0909 OR CTFORUM.ORG Join us for our 25th season of fascinating conversations! LIVE AT THE CT FORUM THIS EVENING HOSTED BY: CTFORUM_0105_DisruptionAd_10x6_875_03.indd 1 1/18/17 5:10 PM has been full. Among his duties is serving as the city's liaison on the Hartford Stadium Authority board and the $71 million Dunkin' Donuts ballpark, expected to open this spring after a one-year delay due to construc- tion miscues and huge cost overruns. Though the vision and execution for the ball- park and Downtown North (DoNo) were "deeply flawed,'' Fitzpatrick said Bronin, who inherited the project and made the controversial move of firing the original developer Centerplan Con- struction, had no choice "but to complete the stadium and do his best to get the overall DoNo development back on a realistic track." "From a personal standpoint,'' Fitzpatrick said, "while this has been one of the most diffi- cult projects I've worked on in my professional career, it gives me deep satisfaction to know that I am helping Mayor Bronin overcome one of the greatest challenges faced by the city of Hartford at the time we came to office." Fitzpatrick said his vision for the city is the same as Bronin's, which "is and will continue to be infused by what the city wants for itself.'' In a real sense, Fitzpatrick said, Constitution Plaza is a "microcosm of the entire downtown area,'' as well as the city's goal to harness pru- dent economic development — with expanded housing, commercial-retail and cultural ameni- ties — to grow beyond its fiscal problems and restore the Capital City's vibrancy. Not too many years ago, some of the tow- ers on or ringing Constitution Plaza were empty, while others were in or near default on their mortgages due to lagging tenancy and rising city taxes and other overhead. That forced ownership changes for some of them. Since then, new or recapitalized owners have renovated and recruited new tenants to much of Constitution Plaza's office space. The once-shuttered Sonesta/Clarion Hotel has been recast as The Spectra Boutique Apart- ments. Traveler's former education building has been resold and renovations are continu- ing. Meanwhile, the former Spris Restaurant/ Back9Network building is preparing to take on Trinity College as a classroom-space tenant. Constitution Plaza also played host last Sep- tember to the inaugural Small State Great Beer Festival. Fitzpatrick said he was approached by owners of Hartford Prints! downtown about potential city venues for the event. "I said, 'why don't you have it right here','' Fitz- patrick said, gesturing out his office window to the landscaped plaza deck below. "Next thing, 4,000 people are in the plaza for a beerfest.'' Reaching into the neighborhoods Bronin's vision for revitalizing Hartford, Fitzpatrick said, extends well beyond down- town. The mayor, he said, has made it clear to his planning-development lieutenants that all quadrants of the city and its neighborhoods have a place in that vision. That's one reason, Fitzpatrick said, the city is preparing to start on $30 million of streetscape improvements — new curbing, curb cuts, plantings, traffic- and street-lights — along a stretch of Albany Avenue, near its intersection at Woodland Street. The city also is preparing to re-solicit devel- oper proposals, to revive its plan for redevel- opment of its vacant North End parcel, at the corner of Albany Avenue and Woodland Street. A previous proposal for that site involved embattled Centerplan Development, which intended to erect a four-story building, with ground-floor restaurants and other retail, and, in the rear, a Rite Aid drug store. Centerplan, how- ever, mired in a legal dispute with the city over its firing from Dunkin' Donuts Park construc- tion, pulled out of the project, Fitzpatrick said. Further up Albany Avenue, near the Hart- ford-West Hartford line, the Westlake Village public-housing community is next in line for a major makeover, he said. Rows of block build- ings dating to the 1950s would be replaced with attached, single-family dwellings like those in the city's recast Charter Oak, Rice Heights and Dutch Point neighborhoods. Remade Westlake also will have a retail plaza to capture some of the estimated 50,000 vehicles that pass daily on the way in and out of Hartford, he said. In the city's South End, the South Green neighborhood, encompassing Colt Park, is another prime redevelopment candidate. Cou- pled with a proposal from The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts to transform acres of surface parking across from it into a hous- ing, office and retail development, "Bushnell Square,'' eventually could link Bushnell and Colt parks, Fitzpatrick said. A lawyer, entrepreneur Fitzpatrick's transition from the private to public sector has been rapid but insightful. "I have literally been stunned at the pub- lic spiritedness of the residents,'' Fitzpatrick said. "The generosity; the willingness to par- ticipate. I didn't know what to expect. But I've found incredibly public-spirited citizens.'' "The flip side, I was disappointed and shocked in how much time and money had been spent on planning exercises that never became real projects. Instead of spending money on the 'planning', let's spend money on the 'doing'." "I sometimes think the plans became an end to themselves,'' he said. "Our priority isn't to reinvent the planning wheel, but to focus our energy and resources implement- ing those plans.'' A stalled plan for using $1.5 million in state grants for improvements to the Parkville neighborhood in the West End, for example, was revived after Fitzpatrick arrived. "Parkville has been waiting for this for seven years,'' he said. Michael Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Author- ity (CRDA), has worked closely with Fitzpat- rick's office and other city agencies on realty from page 1 City's towering imprint drives Fitzpatrick

• Cover