On Woodland Street in Hartford’s Upper Albany neighborhood, multi-story homes decay in the area between Homestead and Albany avenues. The block has been deemed an area of blight by the city of Hartford, and almost every aspect of the stretch bears the weight of this designation.
Almost.
Three properties lining this portion of Woodland Street signify the beginning of a rebirth, and each building’s reincarnation has come — or will come — courtesy of M & EM Realty, a company comprised of Bishop Michael Mitchell and his wife, Ena.
“It’s important that people have something good to see,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell came to Hartford about 20 years ago from his native Jamaica, where he had been pastor of a church. It was a calling he wished to pursue in the United States as well.
In 1998, Mitchell and his wife started the Pentecostal King’s Chapel Church of God. Then, in 2000, the pastor learned of a property for sale at 400 Woodland St. The building was once a nightclub catering to the local West Indian community.
It wasn’t much, “but the vision was what it could be,” Mitchell recalled.
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New Vision
Seven years later, the Mitchells have completed the $400,000 “Phase I” renovation of the church, consisting primarily of the church facility and the adjoining banquet hall. The couple is about to break ground on their more ambitious $1 million “Phase II” renovation of the building, which includes plans for additional offices, a day care facility and a youth center. When completed, Mitchell hopes the property will better serve the church’s more than 300 members and those who live in the surrounding community.
But the church building is only one component of the Mitchells’ work in the neighborhood. As the pastor steps out of his church and strolls past a dilapidated stretch of properties on Woodland Street, the occasional passer-by waves hello or exchanges a brief, but pleasant greeting.
They know him. They know his work. They know it’s good.
Located down the street from the church, an apartment complex with a trim of brightly colored mums rises up from among a number of run-down homes. Mitchell and his wife recently renovated the building, at 359 Woodland St., to make its 12 units livable.
“It’s something I like to do: take something that’s not livable and make it attractive,” Mitchell said. “For the neighborhood, it was just a blighted property that stood there for almost 20 years.”
In a little less than two years, M & EM Realty invested another $400,000 in the neighborhood, this time to transform the apartment building into clean, low-income housing. The average rent is about $750, and all units are occupied. Features include a laundry room in the basement, a bus stop, just footsteps away. Saint Francis Hospital, the neighborhood’s major employer, is located further down the street.
Mitchell is now compiling a waiting list of hopeful tenants.
Next door to the Mitchells’ apartments an empty lot sits, with one car parked on its cracked, uneven pavement. The property has belonged to the city since 1979 and was put up for sale through the Hartford Redevelopment Agency.
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From Blight To Bliss
The lot is too small to be anything extraordinary, and building a physical structure on it is not an option. The only logical plan would be to use the space in conjunction with the adjacent property, which happens to be Mitchell’s apartment building.
“Our [property sale approval] process is pretty stringent,” said Glenn Geathers, project manager for the Hartford Redevelopment Agency.
But after months of paperwork and plan preparation, M & EM Realty has made it to the final stages of approval. Lawyers for the HRA and the husband-wife development team are about to close on the deal. If it goes through, the lot will be sold to the Mitchells for $5,000.
Normally, the HRA gets a property appraisal prior to setting an asking price, which could value the vacant lot between $28,000 and $29,000.
But Mitchell has created affordable housing next door, Geathers points out, adding that he will invest between $70,000 and $80,000 to transform the property into a legitimate parking lot. The HRA takes all this into consideration when determining a sale price.
The block is turning around slowly but surely, and Mitchell is not opposed to tackling a new project, should the opportunity arise, “just to change the neighborhood and give it a better look,” the pastor said.
