2 Have Designs On Key City Lot

Main Street Land Part Of 'Gateway'

August 16, 2005
By JEFFREY B. COHEN, Courant Staff Writer

Two developers have submitted proposals to turn a vacant, 4-acre lot on Hartford's Main Street into another piece of the "gateway" to the city's North End.

One developer would build strictly retail anchored by a supermarket; the other would build mostly affordable rental housing with some retail on the side. The city will soon decide which route to follow - if either.

"I've seen 600 proposals for that site over the past 30 years," said Mayor Eddie A. Perez, who had yet to see these two. "I'm going to be very careful about how that site is developed. We're not anxious to just take anything if these proposals don't meet [our standard]."

The city-owned parcel's future is part of the effort to revitalize this potential gateway, linking downtown to the North End with such projects as the new shopping center at Main and Pavilion streets, the proposed public safety complex, and the renovation of housing on Belden Street.

"I'm trying to do everything I can to get the central business [district] to cross I-84," Perez said. "That's why the streetscape, and what you do with the site, is more important than what the actual use is. It's got to make you want to stop and to walk."

One development group is a partnership between nonprofit Sheldon Oak Central Inc. and CEI Investment Corp. - an enterprise of Joseph F. Carabetta's The Carabetta Organization. Sheldon Oak, which has had its eye on this property for some time, had worked on a previous proposal to build homeownership units on the site, but that proposal died because it needed too much of a city subsidy, officials said.

The developers are now considering 64 units of affordable rental housing and 11,000 square feet of retail.

"Good affordable housing is a good thing for families of low income," said Daniel O. Merida, Sheldon Oak's executive director. "We felt, after doing the market study and the demographics of the area, that the city is right - there is a need...to have mixed use development. So we went for it."

Sheldon Oak is the developer of the neighboring SANA Apartments on Main Street, Rice Heights, the Sheldon Oak II Cooperative, and more.

According to Merida's application, the $5 million necessary to build retail will come in the form of private equity from a retail developer the group has lined up. The $15 million needed to build the housing will come almost entirely from state and federal financing. There is no city subsidy proposed.

The second proposal was put forward by Rony Shapiro, a Massachusetts-based developer who owns the site of the former Firestone building and two other parcels in the neighborhood. Shapiro wants to put 47,000 square feet of retail space at the site, with a supermarket as its anchor.

"Our hope is to redevelop the North End gateway to a retail hub," Shapiro said. "It certainly has the traffic, it's got the people, and it's a totally under-serviced community."Shapiro's firm, NES Group Investments, would develop the roughly $8.4 million project without governmental assistance, he said. In its proposal, NES lists the Northland Investment Corp. - the developer of the Hartford 21 high rise at the Civic Center - as an associate.

Northland's role in this project, if any, is unclear. Asked to describe the relationship, Shapiro said that NES and Northland have "mutual dealings on various projects" with "common investors" and a "working relationship."

Shapiro said that the development of a new public safety complex just blocks from the 1450 Main St. site is attracting retail tenants who have previously been skeptical.

In the final analysis, though, the parcel's future use may not be as important to the city as the net effect it has on Main Street, Perez said.

"The question is, `Is it viable and does it fit in?'" he said. "That's more important than, `Is it housing or is it retail?'"

And if neither of these projects fit the bill, then he'll rewrite it, he said.

"The good thing is, over the next three years, that parcel is going to become more and more valuable and there's going to be more and more ideas for it," Perez said.