Vacant buildings, parking lots continue to blanket a key gateway to downtown Hartford

While many old vacant office buildings in Hartford have found new life in recent years, a key block that welcomes visitors downtown has struggled to be redeveloped.

A number of separate landlords controlling an office building, former Jewish synagogue, and the previous downtown home to the Hartford YMCA on Jewell and Pearl streets say they have been unable to redevelop their historic properties due to financial or logistical reasons.

Meantime, another vacancy sprouted in the area last month when the city decommissioned the old Hartford Fire Department headquarters, adding 64,000 square feet of empty office/storage space to an increasingly quiet Pearl Street corridor.

The mothballed buildings — surrounding performing-arts venue TheaterWorks — are some of the first properties visitors see when entering the city’s central business district off Interstates 84 or 91. They are also surrounded by five parking lots that occupy prime downtown real estate and serve as ideal locations for infill development.

City and economic development officials say the area has plenty of redevelopment potential that could build off TheaterWorks into an arts hub, or add new housing and dining options.

But a larger, collective effort to transform the block is challenging because each of the properties and parking lots have different owners, including some with limited development experience.

“They are all coming at it from different perspectives, and I don’t know if it translates into a larger effort,” said Michael Freimuth, executive director of the quasi-public Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA). “I suppose it could, but I don’t see anybody orchestrating it.”

Despite the varied interests and lack of coordination there are numerous ideas for the area and new reasons for investors and developers to be bullish about it.

Last fall, 35-year-old TheaterWorks wrapped up a nearly $6-million renovation aimed at giving the theater company a higher profile among the top production houses in Connecticut.

The long-vacant former Ados Israel Synagogue next door at 215 Pearl was also acquired last year in a foreclosure auction by Hartford attorney Jose L. Del Castillo, who now plans to invest up to $1 million to convert the 3,900-square-foot brick-and-limestone edifice into an affordable event/meeting space and a “rooftop garden” lounge.

Moreover, the city in the coming months is inviting developers and investors to submit proposals to buy and redevelop the three-story firehouse at 275 Pearl. Hartford boosters say the century-old, brick structure would be best suited for apartment, restaurant or craft brewery space.

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SAM RODRIGUEZ | ALL AMERICAN AERIAL LLC

The historic former fire station at 275 Pearl St. in Hartford.

TheaterWorks spokesman Michael McKiernan said a brewery or restaurant would thrive in the area and help visitors extend their stay on Pearl Street. The theater would also welcome another arts venue in nearby vacant buildings, he said.

Mayor Luke Bronin said the empty fire station “creates the opportunity for us all to think bigger and for property owners in that area to think bigger about what that part of town could be.”

Sara Bronin, chair of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, said she hopes surface parking lots off Jewell and Pearl streets are developed over the next decade into uses that complement and support future redevelopment projects there.

Sara Bronin, also a UConn School of Law professor and architect who is married to the mayor, floated arts and cultural uses as being ideal additions near TheaterWorks.

“If you could see that whole southern part of the Pearl Street block converted into arts and cultural uses, that would attract people to the city and would make that area a destination,” she said.

Gottesdiener weighs in

Larry Gottesdiener, the CEO and chairman of Newton, Mass., developer and downtown Hartford landlord Northland Investment Corp., is a key player who could help determine the Pearl Street block’s fate.

Gottesdiener, who built and owns the 36-story Hartford 21 luxury apartment tower, has eyed the 11-story deteriorating former YMCA building, at 160 Jewell St., as a prime target for redevelopment into apartments since Northland acquired the property in 2008.

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HBJ Photo | Joe Cooper

The old YMCA building on Jewell Street has been vacant since 2006.

(Built in 1938 and expanded in 1972 with 11 floors of office space and transient housing, the YMCA vacated the building in 2006, for new, expanded space in the then-newly renovated XL Center.)

In 2015, Northland proposed a $70-million project to knock down the current building and erect a seven-story, 200-unit apartment complex. The project also incorporated converting the historic fire station space into a restaurant or brewery, Gottesdiener said.

Northland asked CRDA for a $25-million taxpayer subsidy for the project (including $5 million for demolition), but its request didn’t gain support. CRDA officials have said the proposal was too expensive.

However, Gottesdiener said he never got a formal response on why his project was rejected, and that his funding request was in line with the same subsidy, about $100,000 per unit, as the Front Street Lofts, a $35.7-million, 121-unit ground-up apartment development.

Gottesdiener said he still believes the tower facing Bushnell Park is “a great site” for multifamily housing, but the city and CRDA are currently prioritizing development on the outer edges of downtown instead of filling in the city’s central core, which still has an abundance of parking lots and older, underutilized buildings.

He cited the planned mixed-use Downtown North (DoNo) and “Bushnell South” developments as examples.

“While both DoNO and Bushnell South are exciting long-term opportunities, the city and state are at risk of making the same mistakes they made with the Patriots and then the subsequent face-saving Convention Center: focusing too many resources around the edges, ignoring the important sites in the heart of the city,” said Gottesdiener, who was an initial catalyst for downtown housing and contends that the aging XL Center needs to be demolished to make way for mixed-use development, or a smaller, newly built arena.

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Sam Rodriguez | All American Aerial LLC

An office building at 234 Pearl St., owned by attorney Peter S. Gersten, has sat vacant in recent years.

Other ideas

Aside from Northland, a pair of Hartford area attorneys with little development experience are holding key assets on Pearl.

In 2013, West Hartford attorney Peter S. Gersten became the second-generation owner of the roughly 12,000-square-foot, three-story office building at 234 Pearl St., which has been vacant for the last decade or so.

The 100-year-old structure in the shadow of the Goodwin Square office tower was once a social hall for Italian-Americans, and later became home to the Gersten family, which bought it in the 1950s to house their law practice. Outside, its white-washed brick facade fronting Pearl is barely noticeable, except for the “for sale or joint venture’’ sign mounted above the doorway.

Gersten, who does not own any other downtown commercial properties but previously held and then sold apartments near UConn’s Storrs campus, said he hasn’t recently examined new uses for his Pearl Street building. However, about 75 prospective investors and tenants have inquired about the space in recent years.

CRDA’s Freimuth previously toured 234 Pearl and came away impressed. But Gersten and Freimuth both agreed the building could only house up to 12 apartment units, which would not generate enough rental income to offset significant rehabilitation costs.

An office renovation has also been unattractive to Gersten due, in part, to downtown’s high office vacancy rate, which is around 17%, according to commercial realty broker CBRE. Gersten suggested he will wait and see how downtown’s office and residential markets fare in the coming years before making any investments on Pearl Street.

“I am open to creative uses, but fundamentally it needs to make some economic sense,” he said.

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HBJ Photo | Joe Cooper

The former Ados Israel Synagogue at 215 Pearl St. in downtown Hartford.

Across the street, Del Castillo is waiting for the power to be turned back on at his former synagogue building before it can be overhauled into a two-story meetings/events space.

Del Castillo, who previously chaired the Hartford Redevelopment Agency and once owned the historic “Flatiron” building just north of downtown, said he expects to invest up to $1 million to renovate the property, where he also plans to live and move his law practice.

The project still needs city approval.

Adorned with many of its original architectural components, asbestos also needs to be removed from the building before renovations commence. But Del Castillo, a Peru native, and UConn law graduate, believes the building is still in good shape even though it hasn’t been operational since the 1980s.

On a recent tour of the synagogue, he said he envisions the facility mirroring the Angel Orensanz Center in the lower east side of Manhattan, which was previously a synagogue before its new owners restored it in the 1990s into an art gallery and performance space.

The synagogue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and will likely be eligible for historic tax credits, according to the state’s historic preservation office. Historic tax credits would also be eligible for those potentially redeveloping 234 Pearl, the firehouse and the former YMCA building, the state said.

After securing tax credits and the city’s blessing, Del Castillo, an avid runner and hiker, said he wants to reopen the synagogue in time for the 2021 Hartford Marathon.

“I think this would be a positive thing for Hartford because it can become a tax generator for the city,” he said.