In 2007, WFSB fled Hartford for a car-centric and sidewalkless suburban area, leaving its broadcast house on Constitution Plaza vacant for two years before it wound up getting demolished in the latter half of 2009. It only took another 15 years for any improvement at all to happen on the site, and that has taken the form of a mural — or what we might start calling lipstick on a pig.
That’s not a slam on the muralists covering an increasing number of surfaces in downtown, but it has become noticeable that instead of removing surface parking, adding trees, renovating buildings, or even turning long vacant spaces into a proper park, the facile answer has been to throw paint on walls. If taking yourself on a tour of these new murals, it may be useful to look at everything else around it. Is the mural intended to distract from a hideous lot that should have been converted to housing decades ago?
The flashy artwork feels like too little too late. Had this attractive painting been added to the skeleton of Constitution Plaza in 2009, I would’ve applauded it as a decent measure taken to make the site less of an eyesore while the developer worked out final details for the tower that was supposed to go here.
Days before demolition began, Kenneth Gosselin — one of the few writers remaining at the Courant today — wrote about how the plans for a $40 million 12-story office tower with street-level retail unveiled only the year before were being reworked by a new architectural firm hired by developer Abdul A. Islam. The stalling was blamed in part on the 4-5 month delay in demolition due to asbestos removal, and on how the developer wanted a more timeless design that incorporated more green technology. At the time, this project was scheduled to complete late summer 2011. By May 2010, Tom Condon was writing about this same project, then downgraded to an 11-story tower with an LEED Platinum rating: “The new building, the AI Tech Center, will have an astonishing array of green features – everything from ice storage cooling and storm water reuse for sanitary systems to photovoltaic and fuel cell power generation.” Other iterations of plans for the spot included housing and a hotel.
It’s January 2025 and the hole remains. It seems the funding needed never came through.
This crater is not the best way to greet people entering downtown Hartford from the Route 2 Founders Bridge; and, because it’s located by a massively overbuilt highway ramp, it’s not an ideal or even satisfying location for other uses like a dog park, which downtown residents have been requesting for years. As ugly as this pit is, the last thing we need is for it to be converted into a parking lot. It’s bad enough that across from Bushnell Park there’s a parking lot with a giant “WELCOME TO DOWNTOWN HARTFORD” sign in front of it, as if all we have to offer anyone is a place for visitors to conveniently store their wheeled pieces of private property.
Ben Keller‘s new mural painted at the end of 2024 is intended to promote The Foundry, a restaurant officially opening this coming week in the space previously occupied by ON20 (2007-2020) and before that The Polytechnic Club (1984-2006) on the 20th floor of the Hartford Steam Boiler building at One State Street, directly across from the demolition cavity. Let’s hope this paint doesn’t distract anyone from the need to make more sweeping changes to entry points into the city; if housing does not fit here, a small park designed for environmental benefits more than recreational ones would be welcome. All that hideous concrete and asphalt deserves to be offset by color, and it just so happens that grass, trees, and flowers can do the trick as well as paint.