Buoyed by $6 million in state aid, developers are hoping early next year to start an environmental cleanup of the long-abandoned UConn campus in West Hartford before launching one of the biggest massive mixed-use projects in the town’s history.
The prospect of adding nearly 100 apartments, 28 townhouses, a supermarket and other retail space is a huge benefit for the town, Mayor Shari Cantor said Wednesday at an announcement of the grant.
At the same time, Heritage Park project will do away with vacant campus buildings that have been empty and deteriorating for eight years, she said.
“The contamination has been a real barrier to development of this property,” Cantor told about 80 local business leaders and town and state officials. “The neighborhood around it has been staring at a really derelict property.”
Buildings on the 1800 Asylum Avenue section of the campus date to 1970 and have been unused since UConn relocated to downtown Hartford in 2017. Testing determined PCBs from window caulking got into nearby wetlands over the years, and redeveloping the 34-acre site will require remediation that’s been estimated to cost over $8 million.
Developer Domenic Carpionato and partners bought the entire 58-acre campus in 2022 with a vision of hundreds of apartments in a series of five-story buildings, a destination spa, an organic supermarket, a large assisted-living center, a medical office building, a lab, clubhouses and more.
Carpionato and his partners in West Hartford 1 LLC later sold 24 acres — the 1700 Asylum Ave. side of the campus — to Garden Homes, which intends to put up more than 300 apartments there. Construction trucks have already begun site preparation on that parcel, which was mostly campus parking.
Development of the 1800 Asylum side, however, has been delayed in part because of the need for an environmental cleanup before the buildings can come down. With the retail market changing quickly, it’s no longer clear whether the spa and some other commercial elements of the original plan are still expected to be built there.
Carpionato told the audience Wednesday that with the grant approved, environmental work would take just six to nine months after permits are issued. Actual construction could begin on some parts of the parcel by April, and the full project is expected to open in phases over the coming years.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced the grant as one of 16 aimed at restoring blighted, contaminated Connecticut properties to the tax rolls. He said a particular benefit of the West Hartford work is the addition of badly needed housing.
“I love to tell the story of West Hartford,” said Lamont, who resides in Greenwich. “I’m down in a part of the state on weekends where they’re sort of reluctant about housing sometimes, ‘not in my backyard.’ I just say ‘I know you like it the way it is, but like Shari Cantor in West Hartford always says: you’re going to love it the way it will be.’ ”
Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz both praised West Hartford as a vibrant, successful community that’s embraced new housing.
“One of the things l love about West Hartford is that it’s alive,” Lamont said. “Young families can afford to start out here, and seniors my age can afford to downsize and stay in the town where they are.”
The residential component of Carpionato’s plan includes 28 townhouses for sale and 93 apartments. A condition of town approval was that 5% be designated as affordable housing.