Downtown Hartford’s largest commercial landlord, Shelbourne Global Solutions, recently added an unusual purchase to its real estate portfolio.
The real estate giant, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars worth of downtown office space, bought an abandoned building at 25 Cornwall St., in the city’s Blue Hills neighborhood for $175,000.
With the purchase, Shelbourne is looking to help first-time Hartford home buyers, a company official said.
Shelbourne enlisted Lifecare Designs Inc., a Hartford architectural firm, to design a 12-lot subdivision of single-family homes on the 1.1 acres at 25 Cornwall St. The parcel is also bordered by Granby, Sharon and Burlington streets.
“We are looking to provide affordable housing ownership for the community,” Michael Seidenfeld, COO of Shelbourne, said in an email, calling it “a project that helps first-time buyers become property owners.”
A limited liability company affiliated with Shelbourne bought 25 Cornwall St., in July.
The purchase includes a 7,500-square-foot building with no plumbing or utilities that was last used as a house of worship.
According to an application Lifecare Designs submitted to the Planning and Zoning Commission, the building would be razed to make room for the 12-lot subdivision.
Each home would have 1,300 square feet, including 900 square feet on the first floor and a 400-square-foot loft. The homes would also have a one-car garage, a driveway for a second vehicle and sit on parcels of about 4,000-square-feet.
“The subdivision of the subject property into 12 lots for residential development is consistent with the Plan of Conservation and Development and should generally be viewed favorably,” City Planner Aimee Chambers wrote in a Sept. 28 letter.
The single-story property was purchased by SGS Cornwall LLC, whose principal is Bernard Bertram, a managing member of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Shelbourne. The seller was the Northeastern Conference Corporation of Seventh Day Adventists.
The building was constructed in 1956 by the Tikvoh Chadoshoh congregation, a group comprised mostly of German immigrants who fled Nazi persecution during World War II, and originally used as a Yeshiva and day school for between 80 and 150 students.
The City Planning and Zoning Commission held a hearing on the application Sept. 28 and continued the hearing on Oct. 12. The hearing deadline is Nov. 2.
Â
