When Carlos Mouta first arrived in Hartford at the age of 14, he wasn’t impressed.
“It was sad because I lived in a city that was probably bigger than Hartford,” he says. “We had a movie theater with a restaurant. When I came to the movie theater here, they had popcorn.”
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The immigrant boy who made the city’s Parkville neighborhood his home has now spent decades creating the Hartford he might have wanted to see, investing in real estate and dreaming big on signature mixed-use developments, in the process becoming one of the city’s most colorful figures.
Parkville Market, the state’s first food hall, was his brainchild — a project that in its planning stages made many scratch their heads, but which, after opening in the midst of the pandemic, has become a trendy regional destination.
“I’ve been underestimated all my life — I’ve been proving people wrong all my life,” he smiles. “Not on purpose, but it kind of becomes fun after a while.”
Early start
Mouta spent most of his childhood in the city of Beira in Mozambique, then a Portuguese colony. When the country declared independence in 1975, his Portuguese parents emigrated to the U.S., ending up in Hartford. For the teenage Carlos, it wasn’t a great trade.
“I was a soccer player, and soccer was not big,” he remembers.
Nevertheless, he played for his new school, Hartford High, as they became state champions for the first time in 1977. Mouta went on to Central Connecticut State University to study business and marketing. But it was the part-time job he’d been working since his teenage years that provided him with his start in the professional world.
“I’d been a paperboy through high school, then through college,” he recalls. “It was a great experience. You had to provide good service, deliver the paper on time, so it was a real business.”
When he left college, the Hartford Courant took him on full time in their circulation department, and there he recruited others to deliver the paper.
“Me with my accent and everything else,” he laughs, “but I had a three-piece suit with a briefcase and I would tell the wealthy parents, this is going to be your son’s business.”
Meanwhile he was also getting a reputation as someone who could fix things, and a friend began badgering him to seek a job with his brother’s real estate firm. He was intrigued enough to give it a try.
“I knew nothing about real estate,” says Mouta now. But he learned on the job as a general manager, overseeing leasing, payables and maintenance, getting an overview of all aspects of the business.
Then came the economic collapse of the late 1980s and early 90s, as real estate values in Hartford plummeted and several banks folded. He recalls it now as “a terrible time.”
But it gradually dawned on him that what was a disaster for many could be, for an ambitious businessman just starting out, an opportunity. He began bargain hunting, taking on loans to refurbish buildings, and betting that the low prices would eventually rebound.
“I literally bought buildings without getting out of my car, they were so cheap,” he said.
Staying nimble
Initially, his play was all about residential real estate, creating and renting apartments — at one time he owned and managed more than 600 units. The bets started to pay off, and his own company, Westside Property Management – subsequently named Parkville Management – was born.
Slowly commercial buildings also entered the picture. He bought his first, the property where Parkville Market is now located, in 1999. But back then it was still tenanted by the Bishop Ladder Co., and the idea for the market was more than a decade away.
Over the years he has stayed nimble, riding the downturns by getting creative, and often doubling down on his position by investing more in hard times. Just after 9/11, he got into self storage as a way to keep empty property profitable, later selling on that business.
“I did what I needed to do to keep up with the times and survive,” he says. He claims there was never a grand vision. But he looks back now and he can see the progress his old boyhood streets are making.
“Slowly — I didn’t know — I was changing the neighborhood.”
Development influences
Parkville Market, the project that’s put him on the map in recent years, began as a concept back in 2016 as the Park Street building became vacant. As with many of his projects, the $5.1 million in funding was patchworked together, including his own personal investment, a construction loan from the Capital Region Development Authority and further loans and grants from the state.
Honoring the building itself became an important part of the project, and while he preserved its bones, the 200-foot-long hall was transformed to host a variety of food vendors with American and international flare, a beer bar, retail, individual dining rooms and two large terrace areas.
Mouta says he created it “because I love markets.” And that simple love of the thing he is creating turns out to be his driving philosophy as a developer.
“I build what I want, what I think is missing,” he said. “I just go somewhere and say, ‘I’d love that in Parkville, that would be great in Hartford.’ ”
Some concepts have come from visiting New York City and seeing the revival of disused industrial buildings there.
“My daughters lived all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and I go there and I love the vibe. Old buildings being reused,” he says.
Mouta just smiles at the title of innovator — to the man himself, he’s simply applying common sense.
“I’m not reinventing the wheel,” he says of his signature mixed-use projects. “They exist somewhere else — why can’t I do it here? I’m not brighter than anyone else.”
A case in point: The buzz around the market — and the spotlight it has brought to his company — came as a surprise.
“I had done better and bigger projects than Parkville Market, but that’s where everybody went nuts. It was not a big deal to me,” he says. “Like I discovered gold or petroleum or something. I mean obviously I was happy, but I was taken aback.”
The theme of collaboration and inspiring others is also important to him.
“I did it to get folks to start their own business,” he says of the market, which encouraged new food offerings. “I wanted it to be affordable for the community. I wanted the local people to use this. I don’t want this to be a tourist trap.”
For his early vendors, he specified that at least 50% of their menu had to be under $10, to keep the market affordable.
“There were some naysayers,” recalls Parkville neighbor Barbara Shaw, executive director of local nonprofit Hands On Hartford. She recalls early neighborhood meetings about the concept. “People were looking so puzzled. They were like, what? Here, in Parkville? I don’t know about that, Carlos.”
“He’s bold, he’s a straight shooter, he’s candid,” she says. “It’s refreshing.”
But she also credits the famously outspoken Mouta with being able to listen. “Because he cares so much about the people in this community, he’s open to hearing a different perspective,” she says.
Shaw and Hands On Hartford are now embarking on a business partnership with their neighbor, planning a mixed-use development for a lot that sits between the nonprofit’s current property on Bartholomew Avenue and one of Mouta’s.
Mouta’s success with Parkville Market has certainly given him more visibility, and perhaps a little more leverage with city officials.
“Carlos Mouta is one of those rare people who combines vision with the ability to get things done,” said Mayor Luke Bronin, who was present for the ribbon-cutting on the market back in 2020. “We’re very fortunate to have a partnership where a private property owner, investor and developer shares the city’s vision for what’s possible in the neighborhood.”
He credits the market with becoming in a short time not just a citywide institution, but a regional draw for Hartford.
“When you have somebody who’s got energy and vision and experience, and on top of that is willing to put skin in the game, and assemble capital and make personal investments, it’s a game changer,” Bronin said. “Getting difficult projects done, especially in this economic environment, requires tenacity, forcefulness and stubbornness.”
Big dreams
So, what’s next for the Parkville change-maker? He has plans to expand the market, attracting a new brewery and building a rooftop garden.
He also has big dreams for another vacant property at 237 Hamilton St., a mill building that once housed the Whitney Manufacturing Co., a block or so from the market. Here he’s planning 189 apartments along with 80,000 square feet of commercial space, including plans for a beer garden and commercial kitchen, function space, gym and electric car charging.
But lately it’s event space that’s captured his imagination more than anything else. Music has become a big theme for the future, as Mouta continues to build the Parkville he wants to see.
“I love jazz, I love art, so I want artists here,” he says, envisioning a haven for the arts. “Parkville is the location. You wanna come seven days a week, we’ve got music somewhere.”
Already struggling before the pandemic, the wider city of Hartford now faces severe challenges as hybrid work prompts big corporations to retreat from downtown. And Mouta warns that creating a vibrant neighborhood in Parkville or anywhere else also relies on a downtown revival. But he does remain bullish on the future of both the city and Connecticut as a state.
“We’re like, an hour-and-a-half from Boston and New York. We’ve got the best of both worlds,” he says. “We’re 45 minutes from the shore, we have the casinos, we have everything. I mean, what other place do you want to live?”
Mouta says he’ll continue to create the Hartford his 14-year-old self might have liked to have seen — but perhaps not forever. Hinting that his developing days may be numbered, he thinks three or four more years of big projects may be what he has left in him before he says enough is enough.
“I’ll have done what I wanted to do and that’s it,” he says. “More is not better.”