…not that that means anything.
In the paper today, Northland rep, Coursey, expressed what it seemed to take forever for the developer to figure out–people would rather spend a shitload of money on something they’ll get a return on, than throw it away on an apartment.
As his staff continues to lease out the 262 apartments at Hartford 21 – they recently rented their 100th unit, making the tower 38 percent occupied nine months after it opened – Gottesdiener is slowly working with the city to get between $5 million and $10 million in funding for the Jewell Street project. The original plan included 200 condos and 100 apartments. The current plan targets only those people who want to buy: 250 condos and 30,000 square feet of retail.
“At this stage, it’s all condos,” Coursey said. “There’s a lot of rental product on the market right now. There’s not a lot for sale. What we’re finding from a lot of people at Hartford 21 is that there are people that do want to own something downtown.
They can spin the Hartford 21 debacle all they want– only having half of the units rented, at this point, in Connecticut’s capital city shows failure. But the old YMCA site is more troubling, as the homeless who’d been living there will be displaced. At least the only loss with Hartford 21 was a dungeon of a shopping mall.
I hope that Jeffrey Cohen simply made a typo when he wrote:
With more than 40 stories of residential units built atop the old home of the downtown YMCA, a glass tower of luxury homes alongside Bushnell Park, it’s the kind of image that enthuses city enthusiasts.
City enthusiasts? Did Cohen perhaps mean city developers?