Following the head of UConn floating out a half-baked ultimatum, I wrote a piece for CT News Junkie: what if the university had as much of an impact on downtown as the president claims, and by withholding sportsball if not given more money, the parking lot industry suffered.

To write this, I asked people on a few social media sites: what could surface parking lots in downtown Hartford be better used for. Nobody insisted that parking was the highest and best use for this land. Instead, people offered everything from the uninspired-yet-practical, to the innovative and future-thinking, and all would be better ways to use land that had already been violated by asphalt. (You can read many of those ideas in the column)

But what I found myself wondering about as I wrote was what has happened with Hartford residents’ previous brainstorms. As highly as I think of myself, I know I am not the only person to have asked my neighbors what they would prefer their community look like, and I would like to hear or read even more of what others have come up with.

We were asked this by the iQuilt folks, at Envisionfest. There was a large chalkboard. Now I am starting to ask if this was a false memory. Where is there proof of people’s thoughts? A Google image search does not produce results for this. After visiting their Instagram and going way back, I was able to find one image showing one small part of this community vision board. Later, they would ask this again with Hartford400, and while you can see some results from public input, you are not treated to the raw ideas themselves.

The iQuilt Innovation Center is not currently a vibrant space. You can look in the window, but it looks more like a crypt than a “community center focused on urban development [that] provides a unique community gathering space where people of all backgrounds can come together to discuss, collaborate, and explore the power of quality design and advocacy which will ultimately contribute to making Hartford a more beautiful, livable, sustainable city.” This was the case before the pandemic. Are they ever open? In modern times, a person should be able to know this without having to call, send an email, or show up. On the website, days are listed for when the Innovation Center is open. Not hours. Days. So…you guess? The center’s door has no hours posted. On a recent trip by, there were lights on, but nothing that suggested people are welcome in, or even what happens inside.

Is this how we innovate?

A few years ago, Upward Hartford made an idea wall. They even had an unveiling for it. These ideas were not specific to Hartford, but there is more photographic evidence of this existing/having had existed. Upward Hartford seems to have gone quiet, with the exception of last month’s hackathon. There used to be regular art gallery openings that would allow the public in the space, and now, this is not the case. Their Twitter has not been updated since 2021; Facebook is not much better. What’s going on there? The giant banner on the outside of the building on Church and Main is gone, and there is nothing outside to suggest the coworking space still exists. Is this moving upward?

What happens with the ideas? Are they regarded as proprietary information?

It’s a little bit about accountability. It’s a lot about communication and transparency.

This is mostly about wanting residents’ ideas to be valued enough that they are maintained, somehow, with as little filtering as possible. Not every passing thought needs to be brought to fruition, but it should be respected.