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Shopping Centers Today -> December 2003
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MIXED-USE PROPOSAL LIFTS HARTFORD’S PROSPECTS
BY LEE KESSLER
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| Hartford’s long-moribund Civic Center Mall has a date with the wrecking ball. |
Change is coming to Hartford, Conn., where some $2 billion worth of major development projects are to be completed within the next three years. City planners and private developers envisage a revitalized city, with a transformed skyline, a reclaimed riverfront and an influx of new downtown residents.
One of the primary pieces of this revitalization will be Town Square, a $120 million mixed-use development. The 930,000-square-foot project is slated to rise on the site of the moribund Civic Center Mall, which is to be demolished.
Hartford, once a prosperous center of the insurance industry with a lively downtown, has seen its fortunes fall more recently. The insurance companies (and other industries) have scaled back and, in many cases, left town or gone out of business. Many residents have moved to the suburbs, and the department stores and much of the other retail that once drew people downtown have followed.
But the city and state are making a determined effort to revive the city and shed its image as an impoverished, barren metropolis infested with criminals.
“Hartford truly is New England’s rising star,” said Harry Freeman, executive director of the Hartford Economic Development Commission. Such optimism is a job requirement for urban development commissioners everywhere, of course, but Freeman makes his case through a robust list of active projects in the state capital, whose population is 122,000.
The firm with perhaps the largest single stake in Hartford is Northland Investment Corp., Newton, Mass., the company selected to take on the Civic Center site. The privately held real estate investment and development firm has a total portfolio value in excess of $1 billion. Of that, two-thirds is residential and is spread nationwide. The rest is commercial/retail, concentrated in Boston and Hartford.
This transformation is no small undertaking. And Lawrence R. Gottesdiener, Northland’s chairman and CEO, is by no means underestimating the task.
“The redevelopment of Hartford is like a mosaic,” he said. “The framework of this mosaic has been established. But the picture that is ultimately going to be manifest … is not yet clear.”
Town Square, to comprise residential, office and retail components, is immediately adjacent to the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum, once home to Hartford’s last remaining professional sports team — the National Hockey League’s Hartford Whalers — which, after 18 years, relocated in 1998 to Raleigh, N.C., as the Carolina Hurricanes. Ground-breaking is scheduled for the first quarter of next year, with completion targeted for the first quarter of 2006.
City officials have struggled over what to do with the Civic Center and its mall for years. The shopping center, drained by suburban competition, the recession of the early ’90s and an unfriendly, bunkerlike design, had an occupancy rate below 45 percent when Northland acquired the property in October 2001. Northland assumed Aetna Life Insurance Co.’s leasehold interest in the mall and simultaneously executed a 102-year ground lease with the city in preparation for development.
The residential portion, called The Residences at Town Square, will comprise 262 units in a 36-story tower and is targeted to young professionals and empty-nesters. “We will be positioned in this market at the ultrahigh end,” said Gottesdiener. The Offices at Town Square, meanwhile, will offer 93,000 square feet of space.
The retail portion called The Shops at Town Square, will introduce 56,000 square feet of fresh street-level space along Trumbull and Asylum streets in central Hartford. Northland says it would like to anchor the space with a bookstore and café, either a Barnes & Noble or a Borders.
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“What we’re trying to do [with the retail] is create an energetic neighborhood mix,” Gottesdiener said. “We’re emphasizing residential services and restaurants. We don’t necessarily need an Ann Taylor.”
Just over 7,000 square feet of the retail allotment has been designated as rent-subsidized space to be occupied by local merchants, several of whom have expressed interest. The firm plans to begin retail marketing in the second half of 2004. When completed, the project will raise the value of Northland’s Greater Hartford office portfolio to $400 million.
Northland will also build a 50-foot-high atrium to serve as an entry to the Coliseum and as a public space. Gottesdiener says proximity to the Coliseum was critical in the firm’s decision to undertake the project. The facility, operated by Madison Square Garden L.P. (which also operates New York City’s Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall), is home to the sports teams of the University of Connecticut and the venue for concerts, circuses, car shows and the like.
The Capital City Economic Development Authority has pledged $28 million in funding for Town Square. Other state and city agencies will contribute an additional $9.5 million, plus $3.6 million in sales tax relief. Aetna retains an $8 million interest in the property, while Northland will invest $6 million.
Northland first came to Hartford in 1997, buying the Metro Center office building (a contrarian play in a weak office market). A year later Lincoln Life moved in, and Northland’s bet paid off. They’ve also purchased two other properties contiguous to the Town Square site: 242 Trumbull and City Place. Both are connected to the mall by skywalks, but “those skywalks will be coming down as part of the urban strategy action plan delineated by Ken Greenberg,” said Gottesdiener.
He is referring to the plan formally called the Downtown Hartford Economic and Urban Design Action Strategy, drafted for the Hartford Downtown Council in 1998 by Toronto-based Urban Strategies, where Greenberg was a senior consultant. The plan calls for building small or medium-size residential projects around Bushnell Park and for promoting street life. “We’re going to put feet on the street and have people living downtown so they can enjoy the city as well as walk to work,” said Freeman. “We want to make Hartford a true seven-day, 24-hour city.”
Gottesdiener takes a slightly more pragmatic view. “I live in Boston, and I’ve lived in New York City,” he said. “We’re not trying to create a 24-hour city here. That’s not going to happen in this environment. But we’d sure like a 16- or an 18-hour city.”
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