A Shoprite projected to employ 30-40 full-time workers and up to 250 part-timers is now off the table for 1212 Main Street.
A message from the Hartford Community Loan Fund says that “the [Downtown North] district in general and the 1212 Main Street address specifically identified for the project by the City were no longer appropriate locations given the City’s recently announced plans to build a minor league baseball stadium on the parcel immediately to the north at 1214 Main Street.
At the request of City officials, the HCLF had been working on what it described as a mixed-use project “to include both affordable and market rate housing units over the supermarket, along with ground-level retail space for other community health-related partners, café/restaurant space, and parking” since September 2011 when the Market at Hartford 21 closed. This project was to be anchored by Shoprite.
Hartford Community Loan Fund, with help from the Community Development Financial Institution Fund, connected with UpLift Solutions, a nonprofit consulting firm that supports increased access to healthy and affordable foods. Rex Fowler of the HCLF says that “Uplift and its founder Jeff Brown have worked closely with HCLF and Torna-Shoprite in assessing the local marketplace,” as well as with “developing a sustainable model for the proposed Hartford store. ”
A 2012 study showed that $40 million is spent by Hartford residents on groceries, each year, outside of the city. While downtown itself could not support a 50,000-60,000 sf grocery store, one could be sustained by shoppers from the combination of downtown and the seven neighborhoods surrounding.
Hartford Food System partnered with this project in 2013. There was interest from La Cocina, a culinary training program operated by the Chrysalis Center. There was to be a small walk-in health clinic within the market, along with an on-site nutritionist.
In all of this, Fowler said, the “HCLF and City officials had agreed to solicit developers with a strong track record of long-term investments in sustainable community development.”
All those plans fell apart following Mayor Segarra’s assertion that the stadium was a “done deal.” The City Council has not yet voted on the proposed stadium, and even if that passes, residents can demand a referendum.
The HCLF has informed Mayor Segarra and other City officials that the supermarket operator and other project team members have “withdrawn the project from consideration for the site.”
Jack Ellovich, the Board President of the Hartford Community Loan Fund said, “We’re obviously disappointed we won’t be moving forward in our efforts to bring a supermarket to the Downtown North area.”
Ellovich believes Mayor Segarra is “committed to finding a solution that works for the City” when it comes to addressing what the HCLF calls a “food desert.”
Fowler said that he hopes city leaders will “help identify a new location for the project.”
Tonight, Fowler will be speaking at a public Hartford 2000 board meeting from 7-8pm at CREC, 111 Charter Oak Avenue. There will be others discussing the stadium at this same meeting which begins at 5:30.
Jennifer
Since the stadium isn’t a “done deal” why has the grocery store withdrawn from the project?
Kerri Provost
Ask Shoprite
Jennifer
Probably got scared away/were made to think it was a done deal.
Lizzee
I am so upset with the short-sightedness of Segarra and his team.
A REAL grocery store (not the froofy nonsense that was Market 21) and other retail and housing will benefit the community EVERY day of the year.
The proposed stadium is a gigantic suck of money and other resources that will turn a fairly blighted and unwalkable area into an area that is equally unappealing to pedestrians and only busy 70 days a year. Segarra’s assertion that the stadium would be used 12 months of the year is so patently ludicrous that he deserves to lose his next election for that bit of chicanery alone.
Josh LaPorte
I am really, really angry right now; I was at a meeting here on the Hill last year to hear from Mr. Fowler about the proposed grocery store development in that area. It seemed then, and seems now, to be an ideal development plan for an area desperately needing real (i.e. not parking) development. Who knows if it was ever going to actually come to be; but it seems like a well considered project. Building a baseball stadium, which mysteriously costs twice as much as it should cost, seems to be a ploy to attract suburbanites into the city. I realize that it is important to get consumers into the city to spend money, but I am not clear that baseball fans would be spending money beyond the baseball stadium. Especially unlikely after reading comments about this on the Courant website and on social media, these baseball fans seem to have ZERO interest in having anything to do with Hartford.
When it comes down to it, we have traded a possible, valuable amenity for Hartford residents for a possible attraction for suburbanites. That strikes me as being a very bad trade.
Kerri Provost
Fowler was careful to say that the market project was “never a done deal,” but it was very detailed enough to show that serious thought and planning went into it.