Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

September 20, 2021

Parking structures will be key to Hartford’s Bushnell South development

Rendering | Goody Clancy An aerial rendering of the vision for Bushnell South, which today is mainly parking lots.
By Terry Corcoran

Parking structures will be a key component of Bushnell South, a development that seeks to replace acres of parking lots with up to 1,200 new housing units and 60,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.

“The core focus is to leverage the [Capital Region Development Authority’s] work in some critical properties and investments they've already made in the Clinton Street parking garage,” Ben Carlson, director of urban design for Goody Clancy, a Boston-based architectural and planning firm, said in a Sept. 16 update to the CRDA board.

As the existing supply of surface parking diminishes, Carlson said they’ll need to create more parking structures, then operate them in a shared-use format that has residents, office workers and theater goers using them at different times of the day and week.

“We minimize the cost and land area needed and it opens opportunities for development,” Carlson said.

The project focuses on about 20 acres bordered by Capitol Avenue, and Elm, Trinity and Main streets near the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.

CRDA built the new $16 million parking garage on Clinton Street. It is also contributing $13.5 million toward the conversion of the former state office building at 55 Elm St., into 164 residential units, a $63 million project that’s part of the first phase of the Bushnell South development. Overall, the first phase will have 278 housing units.

CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said the authority owns several parcels in the area and expects to underwrite other projects consistent with the plan prepared by Goody Clancy.
 
The second and third phases take advantage of the addition of two levels and about 135 spaces to a CRDA parking structure by creating a mixed-use building facing the state office building, Carlson said.

Phases two and three represent half the project’s housing potential, he said.

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

0 Comments

Order a PDF