EAST HARTFORD — From the top of the 19-story office building at 111 Founders Plaza, developer Bruce Simons gestured to the Hartford skyline on the opposite side of the Connecticut River.
"We're looking at 3.5 million empty square-feet of office space," Simons said.
Though never empty, the building he stood on top of had struggled to fill its own units for years before the wider market took a hit. Simons described it as "an amazing untapped resource for residential use" with serious potential for the region.
"The best views of the Manhattan skyline are from New Jersey," Simons quipped.
Port Eastside, an $840 million mixed-use overhaul of the vacant and struggling office buildings on and surrounding Founders Plaza, has been billed as a way to enhance access to over 2,100 feet of riverfront property and bring vitality back to the area.
Town officials have described Port Eastside as "once-in-a-lifetime" and a potential boon for East Hartford. Former Mayor Mike Walsh eyed it as an opportunity early into his one and only term starting in 2021. He chose not to seek reelection in 2023 to help the project get off the ground, stating that it was such an important development that he needed to devote his entire attention to it.
Now Granby's town manager, Walsh said he still supports the team behind Port Eastside and still helps without compensation where needed.
"It takes a long time to get these projects going," Walsh said. "Everything is moving slow, but everything is still on track as far as I'm concerned."
Walsh said that though Port Eastside is likely a decade-long project between all five of its phases, East Hartford could see a shovel in the ground by 2026 and occupancy by late 2027.
The last major hurdle that the group overcame was acquiring roughly 30 acres of land on Founders Plaza, Pitkin Street, and East River Drive. The next will be forming a district to issue bonds through tax incremental financing, or TIF. A bill to provide for the district's establishment was introduced in the state legislature earlier this year, and Gov. Ned Lamont signed it into law on June 23.
Once established, the district would be able to retain a portion of its real estate taxes and issue up to $125 million in bonds. The bond service would be paid for with the taxes, and the bonds would fund infrastructure improvements for the district.
Members of the development team will need to negotiate with East Hartford's Town Council on an interlocal agreement that will set the terms of the district, including how much of the district's taxes will be retained for bond service.
Representatives for the Port Eastside development team were careful about providing specifics during a June 25 discussion, stating that some deadlines or aspects of the project were too early or unclear.
Simons, principal of West Hartford-based Simons Real Estate Group, said definitively that a master plan for the development would be presented to the town "shortly."
"We're not impacting local neighborhoods, so we can start with this well thought out master plan," Simons said.
To demonstrate that point, Simons walked across the overgrown parking lot of 99 Founders Plaza, describing it as "bearing witness."
Chris Reilly, president of Hartford-based Lexington Partners, said the project is "a bit too far off" to know when development plans would be approved, in part because the creation of the district would allow the developers to take on some of that authority.
Beyond establishing the district, making an interlocal agreement, and gaining any required site plan or zoning approvals, the developers will need to have their financing together before a shovel can go in the ground.
Reilly the developers expect to pull at most $60 million from its bonding to first fund a parking garage, expected to hold between 1,200 to 1,500 cars and feature 40,000 to 60,000 square-feet of ground floor retail space.
Simons said another infrastructure project is planned for a "blank spot" along the Connecticut River between the East Coast Greenway and Great River Park.
The district will retain ownership of its infrastructure, Reilly said, but the developers to make it available to the general public.
"We’ve had a long dialogue with East Hartford and a lot of what we're trying to do is create connections between this project and Main Street," Reilly said.
Port Eastside's plans also include 800 to 1,000 residential units, 240 to 250 of which would be retrofitted into 111 Founders Plaza.
Reilly said that a potential loan of close to $20 million from the Capital Region Development Authority would help fund some of the residential units with "significantly better terms" than a typical commercial loan.
East Hartford also secured a $6.5 million grant to help Port Eastside demolish one of the buildings in the plaza formerly home to Bank of America, intended for a new four-story residential construction.
The residential units would be joined by a number of commercial uses, including retail, restaurants, and entertainment, though Port Eastside officials declined to go into detail on who might be involved.
As for why something like Port Eastside's proposal hadn't already been done at Founders Plaza, Simons said that no one group has had control over the land until now and that he could only speculate on why individual owners would have wanted to keep their properties.
"Why didn't someone do this already, I can't answer that," Simons said. "What I know is we're doing it now."