North Stamford residents fight to protect trees state DOT plans to ax along High Ridge Road 

Verónica Del Valle 

STAMFORD — Caryn Cosentini calls the stretch of High Ridge Road that runs under the Merritt Parkway and up towards the suburbs a gateway to Stamford.

“When you come off of that ramp on the Merritt Parkway, there’s a sign that says ‘Welcome to Stamford,’” she said. “If you go to the left, it’s North Stanford. If you go to the right, you’re going downtown. But either way, it’s sort of a gateway.”

Under that bridge, the scenery transitions from the strip malls and traffic signs omnipresent on sections of High Ridge into something softer: residential properties, hedges, and trees.

But now, Cosentini — among other North Stamford residents — wants to protect the trees from being razed by the state amid fears her complaints won’t be heard.

A state Department of Transportation project plans to rebuild a 90-year-old road bridge. The project comes with a hefty price tag: about $4.6 million, most if it funded through federal and state funds.

Residents, however, are more focused on the environmental costs, namely the two patches of trees next to the Merritt Parkway exit ramp being clear-cut in its name.

Clearing vegetation for DOT projects is nothing new. The department trimmed some trees near the parkway in 2019 due to safety concerns, causing a tug-of-war between the state and some environmentalists.

Utility company Eversource announced on Thursday that it would trim hundreds of miles across the state to protect power lines. In Stamford, that includes about 90 miles across town, according to spokesman Mitch Gross.

The DOT project in question hardly registers as a bridge. The sliver of road runs over the Rippowam River, guarded by steel railings on either side. When construction starts in spring 2021, the DOT wants to replace the existing structure with an entirely new bridge, complete with 11-foot travel lanes and sidewalks on either side.

The transportation department expects to complete the project in 2023.

The two patches of trees slated for removal straddle the bridge on either side — one right next to the highway exit, the other abutting Wire Mill Road. Cosentini noticed the tree tags on the former in late February, and reached out to the city to ask about the work being done after recruiting the help of North Stamford Association President Tom Lombardo, himself a self-proclaimed tree hugger.

“I’ve always been a tree hugger,” Lombardo said with a laugh. “I spent 11 years on the Parks and Recreation Commission. So, I was a resident tree hugger there, and I realized with this project, they’re going to have to remove some trees.”

Both the city and state DOT argue that vegetation management is an important part of facilitating construction projects. Plus, DOT expects to replant a majority of the trees lost in building the new bridge.

“Our project to replace the existing deteriorated bridge built in 1931, with a new structure which is both wider and longer than the original, necessitates the removal of some trees and vegetation (including invasive species) in the direct vicinity of the project to allow for staging of equipment and materials, and to allow for space adequate for assembly and pre-assembly activities of new bridge components,” said department spokesperson Kevin Nursick in a statement.

“The Department is sensitive to concerns related to tree removal, and as such, our project plans have always included remediation activities, including the planting of approximately 98 trees and shrubs as the project nears completion in 2023,” he said.

But to Consentini, the questions still stands: “Are you doing what’s expedient here? Or are you doing the best for retaining what’s going to be left of this landscape?”

To determine how the remaining trees might fare, the city plans to hold a public hearing on the matter. A hearing was initially set for Tuesday at the Sound End Community Center, but city hall opted to reschedule after concerns that residents wouldn’t be able to attend via Zoom.

In turn, the public hearing was moved to April 1 at the Government Center — a space fully equipped for virtual hearings.

But the city might not be out of the woods yet.

As Lombardo was quick to point out, the new hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Holy Thursday — when many Christian houses of worship hold services.

Fairfield considering a 94-unit affordable housing project

Katrina Koerting  

FAIRFIELD — Officials are considering an affordable housing project near the Merritt Parkway and Hotel Hi-Ho that has residents concerned about factors like parking and the Merritt Parkway Conservancy raising issue with the potential loss of that section of the roadway’s scenic nature.

The project, at 4185 Black Rock Turnpike, would include 94 units, with 65 at market rate and 29 considered affordable units. It would be a mix of 26 one-bedroom units and 68 two-bedroom units.

“It’s designed to address a dire need in town for market and workforce housing,” said Paul Richter, the developer for the Merritt 44 project.

The project application is submitted under the state 8-30g statute, which is in place to increase affordable housing but is controversial because it allows developers to circumvent local zoning regulations unless there is a health or safety risk.

Residents raised concerns about the project at previous hours-long town plan and zoning commission public hearings on the project. The hearings are expected to wrap up at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Concerns center on potentially increased traffic, especially in the morning and evenings as people go to and from work. People also worried there wasn’t enough parking for the building, especially for overflow parking for guests and deliveries.

Other concerns were raised about drainage and the risk of exacerbating the threat of flooding already there.

“Our challenge with this particular development is not the inclusion of affordable housing, it is the development itself — the size, scale and the numerous issues that that brings,” Steve Ronan, who lives across the street from the proposed apartment building, said at one of the hearings.

The Merritt Parkway Conservancy also raised a number of concerns with the project, echoing many raised by the residents. They also said it would impact the historical scenic nature of the Merritt, since one of the best preserved sections of the parkway is in Fairfield.

The project includes one building with four floors of residential housing and a parking deck. About 54 percent of the 2.35 acres will be developed, leaving the remaining acreage as landscape, according to the submitted plans.

Richter said this doesn’t include the four acres or so adjacent to the site protected by a conservation easement they got several years ago.

There is currently nothing on the site, but that wasn’t always the case. It was once home to a nursery there for decades. Richter said they removed the dilapidated buildings several years ago and cleaned up some of the wetlands when they took it over.

Richter has been involved with the site for about a decade. He originally proposed a medical building, which was approved in 2015, but then went to the courts. Residents challenged the inland wetlands decision that said a prior application was still in force for the site and a new permit wasn’t needed.

By the time the case was resolved in favor of the project, Richter said the tenant was no longer interested because of then Gov. Dannel Malloy’s hospital tax.

He said they tried to find another medical tenant but were unsuccessful and instead decided to submit a housing proposal instead to meet a need in town.

“There’s lots of young professionals and seniors who have very few options in town right now,” he said.

Richter also addressed the concerns raised at the hearings.

Small, but dedicated group of developers aims to lead Hartford’s post COVID-19 renaissance

Greg Bordonaro and Sean Teehan

Like many entrepreneurs, Alan Lazowski is an idealist He saw opportunity nearly four decades ago to start a car-parking business and eventually built one of the country’s largest parking operators with nearly $2 billion in annual revenue and 15,000 employees, pre-pandemic.

One vision that’s been harder for Lazowski to achieve is helping turn Hartford into a more vibrant 24/7 city. While Hartford has made strides over the last decade the pandemic brought its progress to a literal standstill.

But as the city plots a post-COVID comeback, Lazowski is among a small but dedicated group of local and out-of-state investors who will play an outsized role dictating Hartford’s future.

That’s because Lazowski — a longtime real estate investor and Hartford booster — has been much more active in downtown development in recent years, buying up Class A office and apartment properties and helping lead an ambitious $100 million redevelopment of Pratt Street, which many see as one of the city’s most untapped assets.

He’s also trying to push forward with the conversion of his now empty Lewis Street office building into a boutique hotel.

His ultimate goal is to transform Hartford from a commuter to a destination city that attracts more startups, established companies and people — both young and old — who visit and live here.

“I think the vision is to make Hartford a great place to live, work and play,” Lazowski said in a recent wide-ranging interview about the city of Hartford and his hopes for it. “I could see a Hartford where you have 5,000 to 10,000 apartment units downtown, and that changes the fabric of the city because of all the other services and amenities that come with that.”

A connected web

Lazowski, of course, isn’t alone in trying to push a Hartford renaissance. In fact, he’s got strong business ties — some forged over the last few years, and others over decades — with real estate investors leading downtown’s most prized development projects.

For example, he and Martin Kenny have been business partners since the 1980s investing in real estate in Hartford, nearby suburbs and increasingly other growing U.S. markets like Georgia and North Carolina.

Most recently, they teamed up to buy a 50% stake in four downtown apartment buildings branded under the Spectra name, which include 554 rental units now valued around $100 million.

Spectra’s original co-developer Joseph Klaynberg, of New York’s Wonder Works Construction and Development Corp., remains half owner of the buildings on Pearl and Trumbull streets and Constitution Plaza.

Lazowski and Kenny have also teamed with New York’s Shelbourne Global Solutions on the Pratt Street redevelopment.

Shelbourne has been downtown's most aggressive investor over the last decade buying up more than $200 million of Class A office buildings and other space for redevelopment. Lazowski and Shelbourne partnered in 2019 to buy the Gold Building for $70.5 million.

Together these four investor-landlords control a huge swath of downtown’s approximately 2 square miles — including more than 1.6 million square feet of office space; 71,946 square feet of retail space (about 65% of which is currently vacant); and hundreds of apartment units.

And in many ways their success or failures — along with a few other developers working to revitalize Hartford like Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, RMS Cos. and Carlos Mouta — will be tightly linked to the city’s future prospects.

“The partnership of Lazowski, Kenny and Shelbourne is interesting,” said Mike Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority, which has funded some of the group’s projects. “Lazowski bleeds Hartford and knows most of its nooks and crannies. Kenny has been living the details of this marketplace for quite a while and has a sixth sense about it, and Shelbourne, while new to the area, brings resources that are being applied to opportunities that many others have missed.

“There have been hiccups and the task of revitalizing downtown is not for the weary or risk averse,” he continued. “But this team, fortified with two local guys, has a unique combination and they're not shying from the task.”

In recent interviews with the Hartford Business Journal, Lazowski and some of his business partners discussed the pandemic’s impact on the city while also updating their progress on a few major projects.

COVID-19 was an unforeseen risk that served as a “gut punch” to the city, Kenny said, creating some level of uncertainty.

Downtown Hartford, at times, has been a ghost town over the past year as many of its predominantly white-collar workers have operated remotely. That’s hurt small business operators like restaurants. Office vacancy rates have also risen.

However, Kenny predicts many of those workers will eventually return to the center city — at least for the majority of the work week. And he thinks Hartford actually offers a competitive advantage over larger, more densely-populated cities like New York, which has been hit hardest by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, downtown apartment occupancy rates have been resilient, giving developers confidence that the market can absorb more units and that people still want to live in the city.

“Post-pandemic Hartford is perfect to live, work and play,” Kenny said. “We are not reliant on mass transit to a great degree, which works post-pandemic. We’ve got plenty of living opportunities, a lot of office space to work with and reuse. The infrastructure that is here is exciting.”

Shelbourne Managing Member Ben Schlossberg, whose sister Shana runs downtown startup incubator and accelerator Upward Hartford, said he thinks New York City and Boston firms will increasingly view the city as a good expansion opportunity, to be in a less densely-populated region.

They might, for example, open a satellite office here.

Hartford will need to jumpstart activity in the next few months, Schlossberg said, so Shelbourne is working with other stakeholders on a major reactivation campaign for the spring, summer and fall.

Those sentiments were shared by Mayor Luke Bronin during his recent State of the City address.

“Like every city across the country, [Hartford] has felt hollow and empty without the energy and cultural life that makes us a city,” Bronin said. “This summer we need to bring that back. And I think we need to set a goal: beginning at least in mid-July, Hartford should be alive again with art and music and dance and sports and food every single day and every single evening.”

Pratt St. project

One of the biggest redevelopment projects underway in the city is happening on Pratt Street.

Many business, civic and economic-development leaders have long viewed the bricked, block-long, one-lane thoroughfare hugged on both sides by multi-story commercial buildings as an underleveraged asset that could be the cornerstone of Hartford’s downtown revival.

In 2019 Shelbourne bought nearly all of the commercial buildings on Pratt Street’s south side, from 196 Trumbull St. to the building next door up to 57 Pratt St., and is part of a triumvirate of developer-landlords pushing forward with a redevelopment vision they say will not just transform Pratt Street, but the entire corridor stretching from the XL Center and Trumbull Street, to Main Street and beyond to the Talcott Plaza parking garage.

Once fully complete, the partners say their ambitious redevelopment will count several hundred new or refurbished apartments; 45,058 square feet of retail on Trumbull/Pratt/Main streets; and about 1,000 parking spaces for residents and shoppers.

The project has been slowed by the pandemic, but some progress is apparent.

For example, last summer 32 apartment units debuted at 196 Trumbull St., as part of an $8 million office-to-residential conversion.

Lazowski said his development team is ready to begin construction in April on 97 apartment units at 99 Pratt St. Everything's in place to begin work — and demolition has already begun — except a last bit of project financing that needs approval from the state Bond Commission, which is scheduled to meet March 26.

The bond commission canceled its first two meetings of the year, stalling the project’s start date, but plans to meet in late March, according to a source in the governor’s office.

“We hope to get that approval soon,” Kenny said.

Kenny said the project’s ultimate success — financially and otherwise — will depend on filling up the apartment units, but a lot of the planning has focused on attracting ground-floor retail tenants.

Downtown Hartford for decades has struggled to fill retail space and the pandemic has only exacerbated the challenges felt by small merchants. Vacant storefronts dot much of downtown right now.

A recent proposal by the city council to fine landlords with long-term retail vacancies struck a nerve with many downtown businesses and property owners. The measure didn’t gain much traction but it did spotlight the frustrations many have had with the center-city’s long-term inability to capture more ground-floor commercial activity.

Part of the issue, developers and economic-development experts have said, is the lack of people living downtown. Some estimate the city needs at least 5,000 downtown residents to attract more retail activity — like a grocery store, dry cleaner, etc. — beyond bars and restaurants.

There are close to 3,000 apartment units downtown today, including 2,000 CRDA-backed units that have been built since 2012, according to Freimuth. Hundreds of more units are in the development pipeline.

Kenny said he and his partners are trying to re-imagine retail on Pratt Street, both in terms of the tenants they recruit and lease structures.

“The financial stability [of the redevelopment] comes from the residential but you really need some things for people to do,” Kenny said. “You need to have a bakery that people can go to in the morning or a beer garden to go to at night without having to get in a car. We have to get live music in this town so we can take advantage of the streets. We have a lot of work to do.”

Kenny said talks with potential tenants are starting to pick up and they’ve had some significant in-person showings lately; targets include restaurants, retailers and entertainment-type venues.

There are serious discussions ongoing with a brewery to establish a downtown presence.

Two Pratt Street favorites — the Professional Barber Shop and The Tobacco Shop — will remain tenants although their spaces will be renovated and moved next to each other.

“Most of the people who are looking at new concepts are people who have made money in Hartford before and believe in the city,” Kenny said. “Those are the best places to start. People who have run restaurants and businesses here in Hartford and have succeeded.”

Traditionally retail tenants pay a monthly fixed rent, but Lazowski said his team is rethinking that model to try to attract entrepreneurs willing to take a risk being downtown. That could mean offering rents, at least in the short term, that are tied to a percentage of revenues, giving tenants more flexibility.

Kenny said he wants to see a sports-betting facility in the XL Center because that would bring more feet on the street.

The redevelopment also stretches beyond Pratt Street to the Sage-Allen building on Main Street. Kenny said final funding for that phase of the project is pending before the Capital Region Development Authority. Plans include converting 42 townhomes in the rear of the building into 88 apartments; 13 townhomes will remain.

They’ll also need to fill storefronts in that property, including space formerly occupied by the Dish Bar & Grill.

Upgrades will also be made to the adjoining Lofts at Main and Temple apartments.

Promoting Pratt St., the city

Shelbourne’s Schlossberg said Hartford has not done enough over the years to showcase its many assets — from its vibrant arts and entertainment scene (during non-COVID times) to its top-notch restaurants, colleges, corporate and other employers and hospitals.

“Hartford has not been a great cheerleader for the great resources that it has,” he said. “We believe that Hartford is really a sleeper city. It's a secondary city in the Northeast that for 40 years has basically been ignored.”

Shelbourne wants to change that in several ways.

First it’s planning, in partnership with the city and other stakeholders, a “Welcome Back Hartford” campaign this spring through the fall that aims to breathe new life into the city as the pandemic increasingly fades into the rearview mirror.

Shelbourne Chief Operating Officer Michael Seidenfeld is working on the campaign but declined to disclose many details — announcements could be coming in the next month or so.

Seidenfeld said he views the next six months as an “activation period” for both Pratt Street and the rest of Hartford as it begins to recover from COVID-19.

A new brand and look is also being developed for Pratt Street as well as a historic district website that will promote restaurants and retail in the area.

“So, instead of these small shops having to survive on their own, they're part of a district,” Seidenfeld said. “If someone's having a special, if there's an event going on, we're going to use our megaphone through social media, through our website, through other means of communication, to promote it. We have a lot of exciting things coming up to reenergize and bring the life back.”

Hotel concept

In January, the Hartford Business Journal relocated its office to 100 Allyn St., leaving vacant its former home at 15 Lewis St., which is owned by Lazowski and previously served as LAZ Parking’s headquarters.

Lazowski, who relocated his company last year to the Gold Building, said he still wants to convert 15 Lewis St. into a hotel — despite the severe beating the hospitality industry has taken over the last year. He said he’s in talks with Washington D.C.-based Abdo Development, which opened the micro-hotel concept Hotel Hive in its hometown in 2016, and recently bought a building in Providence, Rhode Island to open a second location there. The micro-hotel concept features affordable small rooms (about 250 square feet on average), but also amenities like a rooftop bar.

That’s the vision for the Hartford hotel.

Jim Abdo, president and CEO of Abdo Development, said his company would like to pursue a Hive hotel in Hartford sooner rather than later. It would likely have 100 or fewer rooms, feature a quick-service pizza shop in ground-floor space formerly occupied by Vito’s and a rooftop bar with beers and liquor from local breweries and distilleries, Abdo said. It would also fit nicely into the company's strategy of targeting secondary cities.

Abdo said if the project moves forward, which hinges on financing availability and market conditions improving, redevelopment of the building would likely take 18 months.

"There's a lot of softness taking place in the office environment [in downtown Hartford], there's already a rather substantial amount of apartment development going on," Abdo said. "We just think that's something that will resonate in that marketplace."

Hartford development boss Mathews hopes developer appetites return to normal

Matt Pilon

fter failing to receive any submissions, the city of Hartford has pushed back the deadline for proposals to redevelop the Arrowhead building at 1355 Main St. and several vacant parcels around it.

That’s according to I. Charles Mathews, the city’s development services director, who said developers will now have until early April to pitch redevelopment ideas for the Downtown North properties, which are part of the Salvin Block, located just west of Dunkin’ Donuts Park.

It’s the second time this year that the city has failed to draw sufficient nibbles from private investors for a redevelopment project. Development services received four proposals to redevelop the former downtown Hartford fire department building at 275 Pearl St., but found each to be insufficient for various reasons. In January, the department formally notified the four developers that their pitches had not been selected.

Mathews suspects the pandemic has some developers sitting on the sidelines when it comes to taking on new projects. Real estate experts say concerns over the cost to remediate the historic properties are also an issue.

“We had real concern from day one with this [Arrowhead building] RFP whether or not, given COVID, that we would get the applications or submissions we needed to really make a decision,” Mathews said. “We’ve sent out a number of RFPs over the past six months and the number of submissions has been fairly small.”

“It just has people not responding as they normally would,” he added.

Mathews said he hopes the recent sluggish RFP activity is just a temporary blip and that developer appetites for some of the city’s most challenging parcels will grow in the coming months as COVID-19 wanes.

Mathews is settling into his new role as the permanent director of the department of development services, the top economic development and planning agency within city government.

He was nominated for that position late last month by Mayor Luke Bronin and was serving in an interim capacity since July.

Mathews, of course, has a long history in city politics having served as a former deputy mayor. The lawyer-by-trade also has private-sector chops, having formerly worked for United Technologies Corp., now Raytheon Technologies.

One of his top focuses now is getting underused properties redeveloped to improve the overall quality of life for city residents, he said.

A greater mix of housing options and amenities are crucial to convincing more young professionals to live in Hartford, and pinpointing additional funding for first-time homebuyer subsidies would also help, he said.

Teaming up

While the city declined to select any of the four proposals for the Pearl Street fire station, they weren’t without merit, Mathews said.

He liked aspects of two of the plans, one of which called for housing on the upper floors of the three-story building and another that pitched an entertainment venue on the first floor.

He said the city has encouraged the two developers — who he declined to identify, but said they were both experienced and had sufficient capital — to merge their proposals.

“They’re both super qualified and I think if they can marry their proposals, it’ll be a site the city and residents can be proud of,” he said, adding that he hopes to hear of some progress on the talks next month.

Stadium, other bright spots

While recent RFPs haven’t gained a lot of traction, Mathews said he’s excited about a number of bright spots in the city, chief among them the development happening around Dunkin’ Donuts Park.

Stamford-based RMS Cos. is building 270 apartment units with retail space and a 330-space garage in the ongoing project’s first phase, which could begin leasing at the start of 2022. RMS CEO Randy Salvatore said he is also currently seeking financing for the development’s second phase — 532 additional apartments and a 541-car parking garage — which could break ground later this year.

Mathews was chair of the city’s stadium authority, which helped shepherd the project through its difficult construction phase that was marred by delays, cost overruns and lawsuits.

However, he says ongoing development around the stadium — as well as the hundreds of thousands of fans it was drawing to the city each year before the pandemic hit — proves that the $71 million ballpark was a good investment.

“It proves the vision that some people had that the stadium would be a catalyst,” he said.

He admits that early on, even many project supporters never saw it as a sure thing.

“It was iffy going into it. We weren’t sure whether or not it would attract the types of developers we needed coming into the city,” Mathews said. “One thing about development is you go with what you’ve got and in the end we were lucky enough, I think, to get the baseball stadium.”

RMS’ project is key to building a stronger gateway into the city from the North End and creating a better connection between downtown and the city’s neighborhoods, Mathews said, adding that talks with a grocery store operator for the Downtown North neighborhood remain ongoing.

Mathews is also enthused by Spinnaker Real Estate Partners' recent proposal to convert the historic 205,000-square-foot 55 Elm St. office building into a mixed-use project with 164 apartments, and Shelbourne Global’s continued investment in Hartford, including its purchase last October of the former Fuller Brush complex in the North End for $4.3 million.

The multiple buildings totaling 326,000 square feet at Fuller Brush on Main Street could house a mix of offices, housing and light industrial activity.

“That is a huge complex and we think that might be an opportunity to really stimulate job growth and bring some more money to the tax rolls, obviously,” he said. “Shelbourne has the capacity with their resources to really change the character of North Main Street by moving that project forward.”

Will watchdog state contracting board finally get enough budget funds, personnel — and respect?

Jon Lender