🔒CT Nonprofit Center to cease operations; CIL takes Atlantic Works building off market

The Hartford-based CT Nonprofit Center, which is managed and partly funded by the CT Community Nonprofit Alliance, is winding down and will cease operations.

“Following discussions with the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and CIL (the Corporation for Independent Living), we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the CT Nonprofit Center program and will be phasing out services over the next several months,” according to a June 9 letter from Gian-Carl Casa, president and CEO of the CT Community Nonprofit Alliance.

The Alliance had been subsidizing the center for many years, but it was losing money.

The CT Nonprofit Center is located in Hartford’s historic Atlantic Works building at 75 Charter Oak Ave., which is owned by CIL, a nonprofit developer.

The center has been a shared home to nonprofit organizations, offering conference room space and group purchasing services for equipment such as copiers and internet hardware.

Casa said the center needed technology upgrades and became too costly to operate, despite support from the Hartford Foundation.

“The center has high annual costs,” Casa said.

The Hartford Foundation has offered to help the center’s nonprofit members, he said.

The Alliance, the state’s association of community nonprofits, will not be affected.

“We are alive, well and healthy,” Casa said. “The ending of services to the nonprofit center will help us do more for the 300 nonprofit organizations in our statewide membership.”

In fiscal year 2022, The Alliance reported a slight $504 loss on $6.8 million in revenue vs. a $212,865 surplus in the year-ago period, according to its 990 tax filing. It listed assets of about $3.1 million as of June 30, 2022.

Off the market

Meantime, Kent Schwendy — president and CEO of CIL — said the Corporation for Independent Living is no longer marketing the Atlantic Works building for sale.

In April 2022, CIL said it planned to sell the 86,000-square-foot property, which contains a brick factory known as the Atlantic Works building, citing a variety of reasons, including volatile office market conditions and high taxes.

CIL acquired the Atlantic Works building in 2013 for $4.75 million, and controls the adjacent Capewell Lofts apartments, which it redeveloped in 2016 into 72 rental units.

Schwendy said CIL is finalizing plans to make a vacant commercial space in the Capewell Lofts building available to nonprofit tenants.

He said CIL did not receive any acceptable offers for the Atlantic Works property, so the group has taken it off the market.

“There is still fairly high demand for nonprofit tenants, although the commercial market in general is volatile and unpredictable as organizations struggle with financial pressures and changes in the work environment,” Schwendy said.

Atlantic Works was part of a larger factory complex erected by manufacturer Atlantic Screw Works in the early 1900s. It was converted into office space in the 1980s.