🔒RCI Group pushes ahead with next phase of Bridgeport’s Steelpointe Harbor

After more than a decade of investment and planning, RCI Group has steadily redeveloped Bridgeport’s once-blighted Steelpointe Harbor peninsula into a mixed-use waterfront district featuring retail space, a marina and maritime businesses. The Bridgeport-based company, which traces its roots back to Miami Beach and the Midwest, is now entering a second decade of work on the 55-acre site, where a 420-unit apartment complex — the first residential component of the project — is under construction, and a hotel is nearing a start. Robert Christoph Jr., RCI’s president, said he and his father, Chairman and founder Robert Christoph, are still fully committed to Steelpointe, even after years of delays. “We see a lot of potential in Bridgeport, Connecticut,” he said. “This has been an ongoing love of ours.”

The attraction, Christoph Jr. said, is that Steelpointe Harbor provides a deepwater port, great access to Interstate 95 and the Metro-North Railroad, and a large site that allows for waterfront living. “We think it has some of the best infrastructure of anywhere in the Northeast,” he said. “That’s what kept us attracted … and pushing this forward.”

Positive absorption

In September, RCI and Kansas-based True North Hotel Group plan to break ground on a 141-room, six-story Residence Inn at Steelpointe. The hotel project, slated for completion in spring 2027, has been awarded up to $850,000 in sales-and-use tax exemptions on construction materials through Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public venture arm.

In 2022, RCI brought in Indiana-based developer Flaherty & Collins as a partner to develop The August, a 420-unit, four-story apartment building with 10,000 square feet of retail space and a five-story parking garage. The $200 million project, set on 6.5 acres, began in January 2024, and is expected to be completed next summer. About 160 units will be designated as workforce housing for middle-income residents through the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority’s (CHFA) Build for CT program, which provides low-cost financing for middle-income rentals. The developers have received an $111 million loan from Illinois- and Indiana-based Old National Bank, according to Flaherty & Collins. Connecticut lenders involved in the housing development include Stamford-based Webster Bank, Newtown Savings Bank, First Bank of Greenwich and Essex Bank, in addition to various state funding support. Also key to the overall development is that Steelepointe sits in a tax incremental financing district, which allows some of the property tax revenue generated from the project to be used to finance infrastructure work.

Christoph Jr. said the Steelpointe project — expected to generate several thousand construction jobs — will likely continue for another 12 to 15 years as the company phases in up to 2,000 waterfront apartments. The firm plans to wait until each building is largely occupied before starting the next one. “We won’t start the next phase until we get to a certain absorption,” Christoph Jr. said. The next project will be a 15-story, 300-unit apartment tower on a 2-acre parcel next to The August. Construction is expected to start in 2028.

Changing perceptions

RCI was founded in Chicago in 1969 and moved its headquarters to Miami Beach in the 1980s. There, operating as RCI Marine, the company co-developed the 400-slip Miami Beach Marina and four high-rise condominium towers with a combined 1,200 units. It eventually relocated its headquarters to Bridgeport for the Steelpointe project. The firm’s connection to Steelpointe goes as far back as the start of this century. Christoph Sr. first bid on the project in 2001, according to the Connecticut Post.

The project progressed slowly over time, with numerous false starts, until RCI Group was transferred initial parcels in 2014. Steelpointe Harbor did not see its first sign of tangible redevelopment until 2015, when a 150,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops opened. Additional multitenant retail buildings were also erected, with tenants that include a T-Mobile store and Chipotle Mexican Grill. The project was delayed for years by extensive site and infrastructure work, Christoph Jr. said. RCI had to clear the remains of a demolished power plant, raise the site by eight feet, and construct a bulkhead around the entire peninsula. “There were years when millions and millions of dollars were being spent on infrastructure, but people didn’t believe anything was happening,” he said. The development took another major step forward in 2019, with the opening of a 220-slip Bridgeport Harbor Marina and a 48,000-square-foot mixed-use Lighthouse at Steelpointe building that houses the Boca Oyster Bar on the ground floor and RCI’s headquarters. That same year, RCI constructed a 50,000-square-foot shipyard on a 40-acre parcel for marine service provider Bridgeport Boatworks. Located in the city’s nearby East End neighborhood, the site was previously home to the Derecktor Shipyard at Steelpointe. Hornblower Group, a San Francisco-based ferry operator, entered into a long-term lease agreement that included investing $8 million in the Bridgeport Boatworks building.

RCI is currently building a 2-acre gas station and 150-foot tunnel car wash on the Bridgeport Boatworks site. It also plans to construct a second 40,000-square-foot building for boat repair and servicing, spokesman Adam Wood said. Christoph Jr. said the Steelpointe Harbor project brings its share of sleepless nights, but he views it as critical to improving Bridgeport’s profile as a place to live, work and play. “We’re excited to be on the forefront of this battle to change that perception,” he said. During his State of the City address in late May, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim referred to the Steelpointe Harbor project as a prime example of the city’s efforts to redevelop brownfields. “As an old industrial city, Bridgeport’s future is dependent, in part, on its ability to reclaim brownfields into sites for housing and commercial development,” he said. “Steelpointe, which was once the site of an old and polluting power plant, is being transformed before our eyes.”