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AILING HARTFORD MALL TO GET NEW LEASE ON LIFE AS MIXED-USE PROJECT

By Maura K. Ammenheuser

The struggling Hartford Civic Center mall is being replaced by a mixed-use project that will include retail and luxury housing.

Despite its name, Hartford’s Civic Center mall is hardly a source of civic pride. The 26-year-old center hasn’t aged well. Its concrete exterior is routinely described as "bunker-like." The mall’s riddled with vacancies, traffic has slowed and it’s lost money for years.

But after a long slow tailspin, it may get a second life. Northland Investment Corp., Newton, Mass., expects to raze the mall, replacing it with a 930,000-square-foot mixed-use project that includes retail, offices and a 250-unit luxury housing tower. Construction is slated to begin next summer and wrap up in 2004.

Northland’s officials aren’t the only ones enthused. Connecticut’s Gov. John Rowland and Hartford leaders want the overhauled mall, among other projects, to help resurrect the capital’s downtown, which, like many others, empties at night. Public and private officials hope that a made-over Civic Center — to be renamed Town Square — will become a symbol of Hartford’s rebirth instead of a manifestation of its decline.

"If you paint an X on ground zero [in Hartford’s downtown], you’re painting it between Trumbull and Asylum and Pearl streets," the center’s location, said Peter Standish, Northland’s vice president and director of acquisitions and development. "Civic Center has been a key piece [for politicians seeking revitalization projects] because it’s been identified as a failed development. It never really took hold as a retail mall. The design is unattractive. It’s not bringing any [traffic] to downtown," he said. Plus, several sources noted, the wall-like, inward-facing mall forces pedestrians around, not through it.

"We need more people living downtown," added Saundra Kee Borges, Hartford’s city manager. This project is "exciting because it has the residential component," she said.

Civic Center Mall has roughly 400,000 square feet of retail on three levels, with a parking garage underneath. Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which hosts concerts, the AHL Hartford Wolfpack hockey team, UConn basketball games and more, is attached. Office towers, street-level retail and restaurants surround the complex; two pedestrian bridges link it to nearby buildings.

The walled-in design of Hartford's Civic Center mall forces pedestrians around the center, rather than through it.

But the mall was never a blockbuster. Aetna, the insurance giant that built it in 1975, won’t disclose sales figures, but spokesman Fred Laberge acknowledged the company has lost $60 million on the center. The recession of the early ’90s pummeled Hartford, and the mall with it. Two suburban centers pose steep competition. Westfarms Mall, a 1.3 million-square-foot center, thrives five miles away in Farmington; the 1 million-square-foot Pavilions at Buckland Hills is 10 miles east in Manchester. Finally, the Civic Center’s clunky, mostly windowless exterior grew dingy and formidable over time. The interior, built around a large atrium and huge skylight, is bright enough, but the decor is bland. Occupancy is at 45%, Laberge said. An uncertain future meant vacancies weren’t filled as leases expired.

Aetna has tried for years to sell the place, part of a larger effort to unload real estate to concentrate on health insurance, Laberge said. It’s also spent months, if not years, in complex negotiations with the city and state over the mall’s future. Lots of people have a stake in it. Aetna leases the land from Hartford, and the Coliseum is owned by the Connecticut Development Authority and operated by Madison Square Garden. In April, everyone finally approved a $120 million redevelopment deal. Various state and city agencies will contribute $37.5 million, plus $3.6 million in sales tax relief. Aetna will retain an $8 million stake in the property. The city will transfer land-use rights from Aetna to Northland, and the developer will invest $6 million in equity.

Northland must also come up with some $70 million in private financing. Northland took on the Civic Center partly to enhance its other Hartford holdings, Standish said; this project brings its investment in downtown to $200 million. A healthy Town Square would obviously boost the overall value of its portfolio.

Northland has an ambitious, multipart plan for the property. The Coliseum will remain; offices and a sports club will join it. The centerpiece is The Atrium, a glassed-in area offering a pretty view and space for lunchtime concerts and other events. The retail portion won’t be huge, only about 70,000 square feet; the project’s raison d’�tre is the housing tower, not the shopping, Standish said. But the retail design has a crucial feature: an external, street-level orientation, inviting shoppers in rather than blocking them out.

As for merchandising, "it’s vital to this project and downtown to come up with the right tenant mix," Standish said, to lure tourists, office workers and the young professionals and empty nesters he expects will live in the tower. He wants premier merchants open morning until late night in the most visible, street-corner spaces; restaurants, or bookstores with cafes, would be ideal. Pharmacies, wine shops, copy/shipping centers and a grocery would work well elsewhere. The project also needs upscale boutiques.

Meanwhile, many current merchants say they want to stay until demolition begins. Northland will deal with its leases on a case-by-case basis, Standish said. Though the mall’s problems are obvious, tenants say Coliseum events and office workers keep them afloat, and they express great loyalty, though none would reveal sales levels.

Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Rainbow Apparel Cos., for example, has three boutiques there. "We’re not going anywhere," said Alex Segorra, a Rainbow real estate executive. He wants to keep those shops either in Town Square or nearby. "We have a base there," he said, fashion-conscious youths on moderate budgets. "We’re doing OK. It’s almost empty, but people find us."

"We’re holding our own," said Jay Mastriani, owner of Arthur’s, a card and convenience shop that’s operated in the mall for 20 years, with 13 left on the lease. He actually benefited when card and tobacco shops elsewhere in the mall closed; Arthur’s picked up the slack.

"We’re looking for other locations," said Dick Smith, owner of Successories, which sells inspirational books, art and other wares.

He has no immediate plans to leave, however. "Business is slow because people think the mall is closed."

Corporate sales "keeps us going," he said. "We definitely want to move back here," said Karolyn Karlson, manager of The Unique Antique, which opened with the mall.

Business isn’t what it should be, she said, but "we work on a repeat customer basis" and sell via the Internet to supplement store sales. "We definitely want to stay."

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