Two buildings which once housed nearly a dozen state agencies in Hartford will soon be the place more than one hundred families call home.
The buildings on Trinity Street sit next door to the state capitol and overlook Bushnell Park.
Nicholas Hoffer, with KeyBank Real Estate Capital, one of the project’s investors, wants the buildings to become a safe and inspiring future home.
“I have a romantic vision of a little girl growing up in one of those windows looking out at this beautiful, gold building, and she's gonna tell her mom, ‘One day I want to grow up and I want to do something important with my life,’” Hoffer said.
The offices will be divvied up and remodeled into 104 apartments, of varying affordability. Eighty-three of the units will be market rate, with the remaining 21 reserved for renters earning 50% or 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI).
With the state in a housing crisis, renters need more options than market rate, Department of Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno said.
“These affordable units, that will be in this building, are for families and individuals that are making between $40,000 to $60,000,” Mosquera-Bruno said.
The buildings will also be well constructed and designed,Mosquera-Bruno said. All residents regardless of income level should be able to afford such a beautiful place in the downtown area, she said..
The apartments are expected to be complete in early 2027. Along the buildings’ ground floor, 4,000 square feet of retail space is reserved for dining and shopping.
Eleven state agencies, including the Offices of the Secretary of the State, the Chief Public Defender, the Child Advocate and the state watchdog agencies, used to have offices in the buildings, but have since relocated throughout Hartford.
In recent decades, Hartford’s population has decreased by about 40%, according to Gov. Ned Lamont.
Projects like the Trinity Street apartments are what will boost the city’s population once again, Lamont said.
“Everybody wants to be in Hartford. You got a lot of housing going on here, going on down the street with Bushnell over there, right down there, next to the ballpark. This is a good thing,” Lamont said. “This is how you get young people here, vibrancy here, housing projects just like this, where young people can get a good start.”
Lamont’s administration is working on ways to make the housing construction process simpler, with the goal of enticing developers and getting towns on board with the construction. The Trinity Street apartments did benefit from a state brownfield remediation grant and a historic rehabilitation tax credit.
With the removal of the Transfer Act, which requires the disclosure of a property’s certain environmental condition, environmental permitting was sped up, Lamont said.
“We take care of a lot of the brownfields before the developers come so you can take some of that risk off the table,” Lamont said of other recent changes. “In terms of housing, especially in some of our more suburban towns that aren't quite as open. We're saying, ‘Look, you tell us where you want the housing to go. Zone it accordingly. Get it going, and we'll give you some relaxation.’”
