Several prominent city developers want to develop a prime piece of city-owned real estate in the heart of downtown Hartford.
And the city of Hartford wants to unload the property as it collects dust instead of tax dollars.
The 40-year old building, at 95-101 Pearl St., within view of Bushnell Park, has captured the interest of developers David Nyberg, Martin J. Kenny, Sanford Cloud Jr., and Carlos Mouta. Each have submitted proposals — along with their project partners — to bring the dormant building back to life in response to Hartford’s request for proposals.
Situated on the corner of Pearl and Trumbull streets, this is the city’s second RFP round since 2005 when city leaders first attempted to unload the property. The winner of that RFP, an out-of-state developer, backed out of the deal due to unforeseen redevelopment costs.
Lessons Learned
However, previous failures haven’t scared any key city developers away.
Among the RFP submissions, Kenny is proposing an $18 million project that would convert most of the office building into studio and one-bedroom apartments with most rents below $1,000. His adjacent Trumbull on the Park project taught him that studios and one-bedroom apartments are highly desirable. While the demand for two-bedroom units at the 100-unit eight story tower has been moderate, the smaller, cheaper units seem to have a perpetual waiting list, he said.
While much of the talk downtown has focused on luxury housing, Kenny said there’s a pent-up demand among the 23-33 year-old age set. “The younger people, they get it – they love the idea of living downtown, but they haven’t been able to afford it,” he said.
Kenny’s proposal calls for use of a phased-in tax option on blighted buildings, but doesn’t require any other subsidies. The apartment building would include a fitness facility and community room on the top floor. Plans call for retail space to occupy the ground level.
Plans submitted by Cloud, who is partnerning with Philadelphia-based Pennrose Properties, also call for ground floor retail space.
Cloud is aiming at a higher level of rental rates for the apartments he has in mind. A few units of Pennrose-Cloud’s $24 million project rent for less than $1,000, but others would go for as much as $1,400 a month, and some for more than $1,600. Cloud said the company couldn’t nail down exact rates yet, but would assess what the downtown market called for and set rates accordingly.
Submissions to the city’s RFP — that stressed retail opportunities for street and ground levels, but left open the possibility of offices, retail businesses, residential units or hotels for the building’s upper floors — were due on Oct. 30.
Mark McGovern, director of Hartford’s economic development division and interim executive director of the Hartford Redevelopment Agency, said the full proposals would not be available by press time.
A representative of Nyberg’s College Street declined to discuss the company’s plan and Mouta did not return phone calls.
These proposals represent a fresh start for the 101 Pearl location after last year’s failed development attempt by New York-based Full Spectrum. The company dropped its plan of developing a few dozen luxury condominiums in August 2006, in part because of an unexpectedly high level of asbestos found on site.
The cost of cleanup was estimated at $2 million at the time. In January 2006, Hartford’s city council dropped the building’s asking price from $1.2 million to $400,000, but cleanup as well as rising construction costs proved too much for Full Spectrum, and the firm abandoned the project.
The building, once home to Fleet Bank’s Connecticut corporate offices, is nearly 100,000 square feet. After the city purchased it in 1993, it housed the Hartford Police Department.
Carlos Mouta of Westside Property Management, who had submitted proposals for 101 Pearl at the same time as Full Spectrum, had expressed enthusiasm for the building’s housing possibilities a few months after the initial deal collapsed. For this proposal, Mouta’s partnership includes Joe Capasso Mason Enterprises, Inc. and Sheldon Oak Central.
Mouta, as well as other 101 Pearl hopefuls, are currently overseeing other projects in the city.
Nyberg’s College Street, LLC is already taking on a series of apartments on Asylum Hill and at the former American Airlines building on Main Street. Previously, Nyberg converted two previous downtown office buildings into residential properties.
