As more people return to their office jobs in downtown Hartford — noticeable by the increase in rush hour traffic — they might notice several beautiful buildings in a row that have their windows boarded up. If you’re like me, you winced at the sight of this. The good news is that this is not a blighted block or demolition project.
These four buildings on the National Register of Historic Places are on Asylum Avenue and Huntington Street, and are currently being renovated to become 32 units of affordable (between 30% and 80% of area median income) housing.
The building rehab includes mechanical updates, repointing bricks, and fixing roofs. Kitchen and bathroom renovations are included in the project, along with landscaping to remove and replace any soil that contained lead or other contaminants. What other contaminants? Leakage from fuel oil tanks, which are also being taken away as part of this project. There’s a fair amount of lead and asbestos remediation to be done.
The majority of these units are designed as studio or one-bedroom apartments, but three will be two-bedroom and two will be three-bedroom units. Eight of these units will be reserved for HARC clients.
It’s refreshing to see an investment being made in solid quality buildings; an unfortunate and disrespectful trend in Hartford and elsewhere has been to tear down brick buildings and replace them with characterless ticky-tacky.
The expectation back in August 2020 was that all units would be occupied by the end of 2021, and barring any construction delays, there is no reason to doubt that given the central location. It’s walking distance to major employers in Asylum Hill and to downtown, on a bus line, and about equal distance to Keney Park, Bushnell Park, and Pope Park.
The Chrysalis Center is the developer responsible for this project.
