Name: Amid uproar from business community, Hartford councilman withdraws proposal to fine landlords for vacant storefronts
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Amid uproar from business community, Hartford councilman withdraws proposal to fine landlords for vacant storefronts

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AdvertisementBy Hartford CourantFeb 09, 2021 at 11:37 amHartford — A proposal to issue fines against vacant storefronts in Hartford roiled the business community downtown, prompting the city councilman behind the idea to take it off the table.Councilman John Gale said he deserved some of the blame for the swift opposition that formed against his resolution, which would have labeled vacant storefronts as blight. He said he stood by the purpose of the plan, which was to spur landlords downtown to lower their rents or get creative about how they fill street-level, retail spaces that have sat empty for years.Advertisement“The intent of this ordinance is to boost activity in Hartford and not to diminish it,” Gale said of the failed proposal, which was co-sponsored by Working Families Party members Wildaliz Bermudez and Joshua Michtom. “There’s no intent to penalize anyone.”But business and property owners said that’s exactly what it would do.AdvertisementThey smarted at Gale’s proposal to issue fines of $100 per day to property owners who let their shops and restaurants sit dark for just four months, saying it would punish some of the very people who’ve tried to generate activity downtown by opening retail pop-ups and filling empty windows with art and holiday displays.“The creative placemaking and activation that has been happening in downtown’s vacant storefronts over the past several years wasn’t accomplished by the force of City Council,” said Tim Moore, principal of Blue Haus Group, a real estate and economic development firm. “It was done by groups like mine, or by organizations like the Hartford Business Improvement District, Business for Downtown Hartford, iQuilt, and the Hartford Chamber of Commerce – all working hand-in-hand with individual property owners.”In the past year, those groups have filled empty retail with temporary art galleries, a pop-up pie shop and table tennis. They’ve worked with Carriage House Apartments, local businesses and some of the largest property owners downtown, namely Shelbourne Global Solutions and Northland Investment Corp.Moore acknowledged that the city doesn’t have a productive relationship with Northland, which owns the atrium of the aging XL Center and the long-vacant storefront space outside it.On Monday, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin did not name Northland but said he thought Gale’s proposal was “motivated by the fact that there is a very large property owner that has let a massive amount of downtown retail space languish and remain vacant for years, making little effort either to lease or activate that space.”In a statement Monday, Northland chairman and CEO Larry Gottesdiener said he shares the city’s frustration that a shrinking retail industry has diminished amenities for residents downtown.“Unfortunately, the pandemic has destroyed retail demand, which we hope will return soon,” he said.An estimated one in three businesses in Connecticut have closed during the global health crisis, according to a December report from a research institute at Harvard University.AdvertisementThe Democratic majority on Hartford’s city council also voiced its opposition to Gale’s resolution ahead of Monday’s meeting.The Democrats recently killed another of Gale’s ideas, to increase parking lot licensing fees in the hopes of prodding property owners to seek other uses for parking lots. Bronin also opposed that plan, which council voted last month to postpone indefinitely, saying it was the wrong approach as the city plans its recovery from the pandemic.Jody Morneault, who owns the high-end clothing store Stackpole Moore Tryon as well as retail space on Asylum Street, said the proposed fine on vacancies was just as counter-intuitive.“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” Morneault said. “It’s not fair to anybody who owns any property in the downtown to penalize them with a tax during COVID, during a time when the entire downtown is closed.”One of Morneault’s properties has been empty since a coffee shop closed there more than two years ago. She’s hoping to bring a nail salon into the space, but says even reduced rent is a tough sell when most of the office buildings downtown remain empty.Those conditions are what prompted Gale to suggest landlords look for activities to fill space on a short-term basis, like offering retail space to artists and merchants.Advertisement“In my experience,” he said ahead of Monday’s meeting, “saving money or in this case, avoiding an additional penalty, is exactly the type of thing that causes people to become very creative.”Moore, also a commissioner of the Business Improvement District, said property owners downtown are already willing to try anything. Carriage House Apartments, for example, is opening a farmers market at 111 Allyn Street by the end of the month next to another vacant storefront that’s become a small art gallery.For a time, another empty space on Pratt Street was home to Pop!, a table tennis play hall that’s now been relocated to another space in the building.But Moore cautioned that temporary shops are more complicated than they sound.A pop-up store opened on Asylum Street last winter, but did not survive the pandemic.Moore has manned a few himself for Blue Haus Group and spends the dead time between customers doing other work on his laptop. But most artists and entrepreneurs don’t have the time to sit in a store hoping customers will wander in, he said, particularly when the streets downtown are empty.AdvertisementThe idea isn’t new, either.DailyCatch up on the day’s top headlines sent directly to your inbox weekdays at 3 p.m &gt; Morneault opened the first pop-up store in downtown Hartford in 2012 to try to draw more foot traffic to Pratt Street.At the time, business owners were optimistic that an apartment boom in the central business district would support existing restaurants, bars and nightclubs and encourage a new mix of retail shopping.The Business Improvement District was producing Hartford HodgePodge, a series of Sunday events featuring food, music, entertainment and shopping on Pratt Street, the historic, cobblestone road connecting Main and Trumbull streets.Those kinds of activities have only increased in recent years, from individual pop-ups to larger events like the “March Madness” festival that took over Pratt Street in March 2019 when the XL Center hosted the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.None of that success can be replicated by threatening landlords with fines, said Kimberly Pisinski, a Hartford attorney who works primarily with businesses.Advertisement“The proposal to expand blight to include commercial storefronts is a 1980s solution to a 2021 problem,” she said at the start of Monday’s meeting. “If we put four millennials from Hartford in a zoom conference room for two hours, we can obtain 10 really creative positive ideas that will succeed in addressing any of the concerns that led to the proposal to begin with.”Rebecca Lurye can be reached at . 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AdvertisementBy Hartford CourantFeb 09, 2021 at 11:37 amHartford — A proposal to issue fines against vacant storefronts in Hartford roiled the business community downtown, prompting the city councilman behind the idea to take it off the table.Councilman John Gale said he deserved some of the blame for the swift opposition that formed against his resolution, which would have labeled vacant storefronts as blight. He said he stood by the purpose of the plan, which was to spur landlords downtown to lower their rents or get creative about how they fill street-level, retail spaces that have sat...

Amid uproar from business community, Hartford councilman withdraws proposal to fine landlords for vacant storefronts

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