🔒Mouta content with revitalizing his old Parkville neighborhood

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As downtown Hartford’s commercial real estate continues to undergo its greatest transformation in generations, one home-grown developer/landlord is staying out of the way of the mostly out-of-market investors and their money who are leading the transition.

Carlos Mouta, raised in the city’s ethnic Parkville neighborhood, says he’s happy to see the conversion of aged, outdated office buildings into bright, digitally connected living spaces.

But he says he’s also in no hurry to mix it up with developers reshaping the city’s central core, where relatively high property values mean equally high property taxes.

“I’m happy developers are downtown. The more the better,’’ Mouta said recently on the grounds of his latest development, to turn an old, vacant former ladder warehouse into the Parkville Market, a casual-dining/merchandising/entertainment venue in the South End neighborhood he once called home.

“I’m not downtown because there are developers there,’’ he added. “ … I buy old stuff and I renovate it. That’s my niche.’’

Though a Glastonbury resident now, nearly all of Mouta’s realty holdings and investments are and have been in and around Parkville.

Just a short distance from Parkville Market’s home at 1400 Park St. and the buildings he owns on either side, Mouta in 2010 refurbished and expanded the tired, ‘60s-era shopping plaza at 1200 Park St. into Pope Commons, that today houses a food, auto-parts and furniture stores. It also has a Subway sandwich shop and real estate office.

Across Park Street from Parkville Market, Mouta redeveloped the Hartford Design Center, housing interior design-decorating boutiques and 56 loft apartments.

In the same block, Mouta is adding two units to the 11 at the former Hartford Plumbing Supply building. Next door, Hands on Hartford, too, is preparing to erect affordable-housing units.

On downtown’s southern fringe, Mouta extensively renovated his Adrian Apartments, 360 N. Main St., to include Hartford’s first “micro-units’’ — apartments sized and rented less than typical units. Mouta got the idea during one of his overseas trips — a frequent source of inspiration for him.

An avowed “foodie,’’ he admits his vision for Parkville Market is a riff on New York’s Chelsea Market, his favorite destination during Big Apple visits.

His vision for Parkville Market is just as grand.

It includes gutting and upgrading the century-old, 20,000 square-foot building and carving out some 40 stalls — sized from 200 to 400 square feet — to house a variety of full-time and aspiring restaurateurs and weekend chefs.

Fourteen of the stalls on the ground floor will have adjoining outdoor space to seat their patrons. Others will be available as month-to-month spaces to encourage “pop-up’’ restaurants and produce and merchandise vendors. Music and other live entertainment will be another regular offering, Mouta said.

Eventually, when all the stalls are leased, Parkville Market’s vendors could provide as many as 200 full- and part-time jobs, on top of the dozen or so of his staff Mouta will assign to oversee the venue.

Mouta says the one thing the Parkville neighborhood lacks is a butcher shop. Growing up, Park Street, generally bounded by Prospect Street, on the Hartford-West Hartford border, and Pope Park, sparkled with the sights, sounds and smells of the ethnic shops hugging the strip.

He’s still optimistic for the city and Parkville.

“We think in five years Parkville will be in a good place,’’ Mouta said. “It takes time. You have to be committed. It’s coming.’’