Hartford Attacks City's Blight Flight

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 15, 1999 | by Eli Lehrer

The Connecticut capital is fighting to transform a boring urban center full of insurance and government offices into a happening culture zone. But mistakes have been made.

Around 8 o'clock on most weeknights, downtown Hartford, Conn., turns into a jaywalker's paradise. The canyonlike streets bordered by soaring office towers grow silent and the cars that continue to trace the roadways slow to make way for pedestrians who ignore the pulsing stoplights. It's easy to walk past the sculpted greenery of the office complex at Constitution Plaza or enjoy the soaring atrium of the Civic Center mall/stadium without encountering another soul. But like many of America's urban centers, downtown Hartford has deep and enduring problems.

The city's government and corporate leaders never have ignored their downtown. Indeed, it's likely that no other American city has spent as many public and private dollars per resident on efforts to revive its downtown. Hartford never set urban-planning trends, but a reserve of money from the city's dozen or so major insurance companies and a wealthy state's desire to have a vibrant capital city have guaranteed that it continually mirrored those trends.

The linchpin of Hartford's current redevelopment efforts is the $350 million deal that will bring the New England Patriots football team from the Boston suburbs to a new stadium complex along the city's long underdeveloped Connecticut River waterfront. Joined with apartment buildings, entertainment venues, a large retail/dining complex, a convention center, parking, a higher-education center for all of the region's colleges and dozens of minor projects, Hartford hopes to transform a lifeless urban center full of insurance and government offices into a bustling regional entertainment and cultural destination.

Hartford, in other words, is trying everything at once. Although firm commitments exist only for the stadium/convention complex and a trolley linking it to the existing downtown, every major interest in the city has lined up behind this effort to remake the heart of Hartford. In the next five or so years, the city will be testing development of nearly every type of proposal for downtown revitalization.

"All of the attention goes to these two or three big projects we are planning, like the stadium and the convention center" says Arthur Anderson, a developer of low-cost housing who heads the Capital City Redevelopment Authority, an agency responsible for rebuilding the city. "The truth is that a lot of these projects are incremental. The higher-education center and parking are all pretty small-scale. The housing we want to build will be many projects at scattered sites. This is not all major project planning at all. We're trying a very incremental approach supplemented by some big projects."

The current redevelopment frenzy began in earnest when Phoenix Home Life Mutual Insurance Co. announced plans for a stadium, convention center, housing and dining complex called Adriaen's Landing. Named for Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, the first European to visit the area, the proposal initially involved a domed stadium for the University of Connecticut's football team which, after the state struck a deal with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, was replaced with a much larger open-air arena for the Pats. Sketches of the project show a pedestrian-friendly retail development tightly integrated into the city's street grid.

Phoenix Home Life's reasons for getting involved were complex. "To a certain extent, it's that we wanted to help with our community. This is where we are based and we wanted to do what we could. It will help everyone if downtown Hartford becomes a destination again," says John Sandberg, Phoenix Home Life's point man for the project. "There was also a definite factor of self-interest. Our chairman was the head of the chamber of commerce and he realized that there was a massive problem getting the sort of skilled, younger workers our company wanted to come to work for us. A lot of it had to do with the perception that downtown Hartford is boring."

It's difficult to dispute that assertion. After years of failed projects to revitalize it, the situation hit rock-bottom in 1996 as social-service agencies became the only tenants interested in renting space downtown. The agencies brought in a steady stream of troubled people who committed crimes and created an unpleasant environment. It got so bad that the city drew national attention for imposing a moratorium on new social-service offices. "It was a holding action until development could take off" says Art Feltmen, a state legislator who pushed for the moratorium as a member of Hartford's city council. Around the same time, the Whalers of the National Hockey League, the only big-league sports team Hartford had hosted in the postwar era, announced they would leave.

Not everyone saw the team's departure as a major loss. "Hockey doesn't exactly have a lot of black and Puerto Rican faces in it. There isn't much at the Civic Center for the people who actually live here," says Bernardine Silvers, a community leader in the Sheldon/Charter Oak neighborhood. Silvers, whose house sits a stone's throw from the new stadium complex, offers her support for it because she says she believes it can breathe new life into the city.