An ongoing $19.4 million effort by the City of Hartford to build a 32,000-square-foot mixed-use building is in line to receive an emergency $700,000 boost.
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An ongoing $19.4 million effort by the City of Hartford to build a 32,000-square-foot mixed-use building — combining a new health department headquarters with ground-floor retail space — is in line to receive an emergency $700,000 boost.
Capital Region Development Authority leaders are proposing the capital infusion after unexpectedly finding a patch of subsurface pollution at the vacant 2.3-acre city-owned lot at the corner of Albany Avenue and Woodlawn Street.
The city and Grow America — a nonprofit developer partnered in the building effort — have applied for a roughly $1.5 million state brownfield cleanup grant to help defray costs, even as project leaders try to identify the scope of the newly discovered pollution and the real cost to remediate it, CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said Thursday.
With that application pending and not entirely certain, CRDA staff are asking the agency’s board to set aside another $700,000 from a city revolving loan fund controlled by the agency. This would go to a reserve fund that will allow the project to keep moving forward despite cost hikes.
The project is about 40% complete. Any stoppage due to an out-of-balance budget would end up increasing costs, Freimuth warned.
Freimuth said the project also faces challenges from outdated and unreliable stormwater drainage maps that could increase costs.
City and CRDA officials had previously committed $12.85 million from the city’s revolving loan fund to the project. The city directly contributed another $1 million and CRDA is loaning $5.5 million to the project.
A CRDA subcommittee endorsed the $700,000 contingency on Thursday, with a final vote expected next week.
Freimuth said project planners are negotiating with potential retail tenants, including a bank. A hoped-for restaurant has not yet been secured, he said. It’s possible a pharmacy could be recruited to the site, he added.
