Hartford is leading the way when it comes to converting old office buildings into apartments. Now a bill making its way through the General Assembly could clear the way for other municipalities to do the same.
Hartford is leading the way when it comes to converting old office buildings into apartments. Now a bill making its way through the General Assembly could clear the way for other municipalities to do the same. Mayor Arunan Arulampalam (D- Hartford) joins Mike to explain how they’ve been successful.
Mike Hydeck: By some estimates, Connecticut needs 80,000 housing units or even more. The lack of housing is driving rents through the roof. Home sales are going well above asking price because there's literally no inventory in some towns. Senate Bill 416 aims to make a significant dent in that. It would make it easier for developers to renovate old, empty office buildings and turn them into housing condos and apartments and the like. Hartford is one of the cities with buildings that this description could fit. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam joins me now to talk about this bill and if it would benefit Hartford and maybe surrounding cities as well. Glad to have you back. I'm glad you're here. So this has already happened in Hartford. This sort of could be a case study for the rest of the state.
Arunan Arulampalam: We're doing a lot of this.
Mike Hydeck: One example is the Sonesta Hotel. I'm very familiar with that property. I used to work next door to it. That turned into apartments there on Constitution Plaza. Is it palatable? Do people come and rent these when they renovate it? If you're sitting in an old hotel, oh, that's my new home. Will people do it?
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Arunan Arulampalam: Not only are they rented, but every building that goes up in our downtown is 96 percent to 98 percent full almost immediately. I mean, we've turned office buildings into new apartments. We've turned old 18th century industrial complexes at Capital Lofts and Capewell into new apartments. We're converting all sorts of buildings. And what we're finding is a huge demand. We also, since COVID, 46 percent of those folks moving into those downtown apartments are coming from New York or Boston. So people in big cities think Hartford is a cool place to live and are coming in droves. And so we're seeing an explosion in our housing. We'll continue to do some of this conversion. You know, the larger scale, the places like City Place, there's just not a lot of window space, a lot of space in the middle the way those offices are. So it's hard to convert those into apartments. But if we can turn some of the buildings that are better conversions into apartments, and push some of those businesses into the larger commercial office space, it helps us maintain our grand list, helps us maintain those big buildings for years to come. And also brings a lot more feet to the street.
Mike Hydeck: Which is important because there's so much state property that you don't get tax revenue from, so the more tax revenue can help. So the pushback on the bill though, is it could take control away from zoning boards. So they could say look, a developer can come in just knock some stuff out and they have no say. Do you feel that would be the case in Hartford if this continues?
Arunan Arulampalam: I mean, it's an interesting concept, I would look into it, but like it to the extent that it's about Hartford, I don't think we have that issue. We have seen so much conversion in the last few years. We're doing this and we're thinking innovatively about our buildings. So you know, I don't know which towns they feel like they need to push a little bit. It's not the City of Hartford.
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Mike Hydeck: It's not happening with you. So I'd also heard that the Hilton was a possibility for a project like that in the future. I don't know if that's moving forward.
Arunan Arulampalam: So it's already turned into housing. It's part Doubletree, part housing now. We're converting an old, I know you're a UConn alum, we are working on a conversion potentially on an agreement to convert an office space into UConn student housing so we can get students downtown. I keep saying Hartford is a college town. We've got more undergrads in Hartford than Yale's got, than Wesleyan's got, and we're gonna get some of those undergrads with feet on the street, you know, turning our downtown into more of a college town.
Mike Hydeck: So full disclosure, my son's about to be an undergrad possibly at UConn. We're gonna decide this week. So we'll see. All right, so when you talk about new housing, two things always come up, right? First thing is, is affordable housing going to be in the component? And how much? Because if there's too much, the developer can't make enough money on the project, and they're just gonna walk away. So how does affordable housing fit into the equation in your mind?
Arunan Arulampalam: Well, look, every project that we do still in the City of Hartford requires some level of public contribution. And so we are really intentional about making sure that these buildings that we're building, that we're building affordable components into it. We want to make sure that everybody can live in our community. And as housing prices go up, it creates a real impact on folks who have been living in this community for decades. And so we want to make sure that everyone has a place where they can call home, that Hartford doesn't become unaffordable for the residents who already live here, while also growing and continuing to reinvent ourselves, regrow, and rebuild.
Mike Hydeck: It seems like the north end of Hartford is an important place to focus on because you already have those high end apartments right off, next to the ballpark. So you're going to need some affordable housing. Are there parcels of land where that can happen in the north end? Is there a North End development that can sort make that happen?
Arunan Arulampalam: Affordable housing happens in large scale apartments. It also happens in these multi-families and there's a lot of work being done to renovate. In my prior job at the Land Bank and so many other efforts with other great non-profits around the city, to renovate the smaller scale apartments, the three units, six units, and those kind of mid sized apartments. There's an exciting market rate project. The North End also has very few market rate, affordable, market rate rental housing. And so we want to create that mix. We want to make sure that that people with resources and people who need subsidized housing are able to live in the same communities, that we have that diversity, that we're bringing people together. Hartford is about connecting people and bringing all sorts of people together. And so we're intentional both in planning out our downtown, right and in the North End and in the South End and across our city and making sure that we can bring that mix to the table.
Mike Hydeck: Less than a minute. The big hole in Hartford for decades already has been a grocery store. Where is something like that happening in this whole plan trying to get housing?
Arunan Arulampalam: You know, we're working really hard. And I will tell you, I don't think one grocery store is enough. West Hartford's got seven grocery stores. To not have, in a city twice the size, to not have any grocery stores for most communities, it's really a travesty. And so you know, I think we'll see grocery stores downtown. I think we'll see grocery stores in North Hartford and I think we're going to work intensely on a number of kind of food options. We're going to work intentionally with some of our bodegas and corner stores to try to bring more healthy food options into people's streets and neighborhoods. There's an exciting sliding scale grocery store that Fire by Forge, if you're familiar with the Billings Forge building, right there to bring healthy food into Frog Hollow that allows folks with food stamps to utilize that food in partnership with food share. And so there's a lot of food options that we're trying to work on. There's no single silver bullet, but one grocery store, I think is not enough.
Mike Hydeck: We gotta leave it there. Hartford mayor, good to see you.
Arunan Arulampalam: Thank you.
