Ever since Carlos A. Mouta purchased a former Connecticut factory in 1999, it has been a struggle to lease the office space that he and his partners created in a building where bicycle and automobile tires were once manufactured.
The challenge only deepened in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood the aftermath of the pandemic, as major downtown tenants downsized and landlords were more than willing to cut lease deals at attractive rates to backfill a soaring volume of vacant space, even in the most desirable office towers.
“If somebody wants to be in downtown, and the price is the same as here,” Mouta said, “and their business may be perceived better or have better, faster access to clients, then they are going to go downtown. Rents are so cheap.”
Mouta, a major force in the neighborhood’s redevelopment and the creator of Parkville Market, is now looking to turn a chunk of the office space on the upper floors of the former Hartford Rubber Works tire factory into apartments, a $4.5 million project that Mouta hopes will tap into the strong demand for residential rentals throughout the city.
Parkville, seen as link between the city and nearby West Hartford, has been a rising star for arts and culture in Hartford for years.
The neighborhood has been anchored by Real Art Ways, the contemporary arts center on Arbor Street, that is nearing the start of an ambitious expansion. In the past five years, the Parkville Market food hall has turned into a high-profile attraction, adding a roughly 12,000-square-foot events space in a neighboring building earlier this year.
Housing is a critical component of a vision for creating a more walkable neighborhood as the foundation for an arts and innovation district.
Mouta’s plans call for adding 47 apartments — the majority of the units designed as one-bedrooms, the structure’s 20-foot high ceilings also allowing for loft-style design — to the 96 residential units that already exist on the building’s upper floors. The apartments would have an average size of 600 square feet and an average rent of $1,750, according to the Capital Region Development Authority, which is considering lending up to $3.5 million in a low-cost, state-funded loan for the project.
Mouta is pushing ahead with the conversion at 1429 Park St., even as two other of his apartment projects in the neighborhood have stalled, both running into trouble over pulling financing together.
One of those — the $90 million conversion of the massive, long-abandoned Whitney Manufacturing Co. on Hamilton Street — may not even become residential rentals, a project once described as a linchpin to a broader Parkville revitalization.
Mouta said he has been trying — unsuccessfully — to secure bank financing for the project for at least two years. He said he is seriously considering making a dramatic shift to converting the building to self-storage, which he successfully executed on nearby Pope Park Highway.
“I did it before, I’ll do it again,” Mouta, 64, said. “I’m just tired, and I’m extremely frustrated.”
The city — in a fund managed by CRDA — loaned Mouta $4 million for an environmental clean-up of the 237 Hamilton Street property that has been completed. Recently, CRDA’s board suspended interest payments on the loan for nine months to give Mouta more time.
“We just wanted to see if we could figure out a different way of assembling thing,” Michael W. Freimuth, CRDA’s executive director, said.
Freimuth conceded, however, that the project is on “life support” and has run into a tight commercial lending environment and rising construction costs. In early 2023, CRDA committed an $8.5 million for a conversion into 235 apartments, but the funds wouldn’t be invested unless other financing first falls into place.
“Honestly, it’s so long in tooth,” Freimuth said.
Mouta’s other project — a new, $29 million apartment building and 400-space parking garage on a surface lot near the corner of Bartholomew Avenue and Park St. — was sidelined earlier this year. Critical public funding was moved to another project, a proposed artificial intelligence center near Dunkin’ Park, the city’s minor league ballfield.
The garage was seen as easing a parking crunch at the Parkville Market and other neighborhood businesses.
Arts and innovation
Under the previous mayoral administration of Luke Bronin, there was a sweeping vision of an arts and innovation district that would be fueled by the development of a dozen properties in the heart of Parkville, once a hub of manufacturing turning out bicycles, typewriters and automobiles.
The $250 million development plan would have been boosted by nearly $50 million from the state’s innovation corridor program. At the heart of the city’s plan is creating innovation space to form startups in areas such as advance manufacturing and digital technology, while providing a place for them to grow and creating jobs at all skill levels.
While the plan rested heavily on encouraging innovation, it also sought to create a walkable neighborhood with new housing and after-hours dining and entertainment, all aimed at revitalizing a long impoverished area of the city.
The innovation corridors program required that state funding provide no more than 20% of development costs, a stipulation that made it difficult for cities to find matching funds. Subsequently, the state shifted its focus to the current innovation clusters program, a $100 million grant program aimed at fostering next-generation technology in Connecticut such as artificial intelligence and quantum technology.
Hartford is now competing for a share of the $50 million that remains in that program as it aspires establish an applied artificial intelligence center in the city. New Haven was recently awarded $50.5 million.
The top development official in the current Hartford mayoral administration of Arunan Arulampalam said the city is still very much behind the idea of supporting the development of the arts, innovation and culture in Parkville, but more on a project-by-project basis.
“We think it’s a critical crossroads for the city, and there is a lot of potential there,” Jeff Auker, the city’s director of development services, said. “We just got to make sure we can get these deals to pencil out.”
A push to form a business improvement district in Parkville — patterned after the one in downtown Hartford — failed in a referendum of property owners in late May. Such a district would help oversee security, keep the area clean of litter, launch marketing campaigns and promote events in the neighborhood.
“We remain committed to revitalizing Parkville’s business corridor and will continue working closely with the city of Hartford, property owners, and community members to explore the best path forward to establish a business improvement district,” Mary Coursey, a spokesperson for the district organizers, said, in a statement.
An improvement district can only be formed if more than 50% property owners and more than 50% of the assessed value of the properties within the district boundaries line up behind the initiative. Becoming part of the district means paying higher property taxes to fund the district, including the staff to run it. The city council also must pass a specific ordinance creating the district.
Coursey declined further comment, but it appears one reason for the defeat was not enough buy-in from some of the larger property owners within the boundaries of the proposed district.
‘A real social space’
At Real Art Ways, a fixture in the neighborhood for three decades, its executive director, Will K. Wilkins, said the area’s success does not necessarily have to rely solely on the big-ticket development projects that capture the headlines.
“There are a lot of creative activities that are going on in the neighborhood,” Wilkins said. “There’s a lot of smaller things that are happening. Our building at 56 Arbor St. is full. There are all kinds of potential tenants who come to us, and most of them are creative in one way or another: artists and small business people who have creative businesses.”
One new tenant, Hartford Press Co-op, is an organization of artists that provides classes, workshops and “sliding-scale” members with the goal of building a creative community around printmaking and the “book arts” — ranging from traditional bookbinding to approaches that treat a book as an expressive object.
“About a third of the tenants are practicing artists who have studios in there,” Wilkins said. “And we’re really pleased that the interest in being in that kind of environment is strong and continues to be In some ways, it’s the smaller things that are an indication of the creative activity.”
Parkville’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is supported by nonprofits such as reSet, an incubator and accelerator, and Hands on Hartford, which has a shared-used, commercial kitchen that is available for startups and small businesses that are members and seeking to grow their operations.
“We’re partnering with them in terms of how we help those businesses get ready to grow,” Sarah Bodley, executive director of reSet, said. “We’ve had good success with folks doing a lot of pop-ups at Parkville Market, which is just a staple in the community.”
The expansion at Real Art Ways is part of a larger $24 million vision for its building that calls for a major addition, increasing the size of the arts venue by 50%. The project also includes three movie screens, bringing the organization’s total to four. The project also will add a dedicated area for the performing arts, a new café, and more space for educational programs.
Wilkins said the organization hopes to break ground by Thanksgiving for a project that has been planned for years.
“What Real Art Ways is going to be is a real social space for a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds to come together,” Wilkins said. “It’s going to be something where the energy and that momentum is going to have a broader impact — not just in the neighborhood but in the whole region.”
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected].