WEST HARTFORD – Exactly 10 years ago after some predicted the new Westfarms Mall would suck the life out of West Hartford Center, property there is at a premium and new construction has hit an all-time high.
A new office building, a new three-story shopping mall and more than two dozen shops have been built, sold, renovated or expanded in the past 18 months, all in an area smaller than a couple of city blocks.
Several other major property owners and a new partnership, hoping to strike while the block is hot, are considering increases in the height of their buildings, possibly giving the quiet suburb a modest skyline.
“There’s more excitement, there’s more enthusiasm, there’s more investment than we’ve had for a long time,” said Robert W. Simmons Jr., president of the Chamber of Commerce. “there hasn’t been a surge like this since the center was first developed. That was 25 or 30 years aog.
News spreads quickly through West Hartford Center, and the excitement has become contagious.
Burton I. Cohen has barely touched a brick on this seven South Main Street stores singe he bought them in 1959. But recently he hired engineers to determine the feasibility of adding two more floors.
“I sense a new kind of vitality in the center,” Cohen said recently. “The winds are blowing the right way. The center is getting very hot."
“I didn’t want to do anything until I thought the climate was right,” he said. ”Now that it’s being done, I think it will work.”
Two weeks ago, a 12-member partnership paid $1.2 million for a row of four stores in the heart of the center – at the corner of Farmington Avenue and Main Street.
Howard Klebanoff, a Hartford lawyer and spokesman for the group, said they hope to add two floors of office space and a flashy new façade.
“I think we’re looking at the beginning of an awareness of the center’s value,” Klebanoff said. “Certainly that’s a big factor for us.”
Klebanoff said a key reason he and his partners bought the property was the pioneer work of Leonard Udolf, a Hartford area developer who is creating a retail-and-office complex [See Westfarms, Page C2] [Continued from Page C1] two doors from the Klebanoff group’s purchase.
If any one development has sparked the center fever, merchants and property owners say it is Udolf’s conversion of the former Central movie theater into a three-story shopping mall and office building.
“Udolf’s building was certainly a catalyst for us,” Klebanoff said. “When I say it was a catalyst, I mean it certainly served as an example of what can be done.”
Mayor Kevin B. Sullivan called Udolf’s project “a fine example of what many of us see as the type of caring commercial renewal which will keep our community moving forward.”
And barely a block west of Udolf’s building, a longtime center property owner, Seymour Sard, is almost finished with a new three-story, 17,000 square-foot building. The building’s retail space, on the first floor, opened this week and offices on the upper floors are to open later.
The center’s activity is a sharp contrast to the years when Westfarms Mall was a shiny new attraction. Then, many center merchants watched their customers drive three miles farther along Main Street to shop.
“When Westfarms was first conceived, everyone was a prophet of doom.” Cohen said.
Fear of the mall no longer haunts the center. Merchants say most of their customers have tried and not liked Westfarms, and there is a difference in the clientele.
Leslie Rottner is the owner of Leslie’s shoe store for women in the center.
“Westfarms Mall is like the McDonalds of clothing. It fills you up, but it’s not good for you.”
“Our customer, she doesn’t shop at the mall.” Rottner said. “They’re appealing to Middle America . . . I’m looking for the woman who wants to see something a little bit different.”
The heart of West Hartford Center, a two-block stretch of Farmington Avenue, LaSalle Road and part of Main Street is home to a few dozen small stores. They sell a variety of goods, including bridal wear, children’s clothing, books, gifts, records, hardware, toys, and baked goods.
Most merchants say the biggest reason they have survived is the area’s personality, a quality they say the center has and Westfarms lacks. Many center merchants live in town and some have known their customers for years.
Much of the center’s recent development has been office space and, although the market is relatively untested, a recent town study indicated there is a need.
The preliminary draft of the town Planning Department’s report on the center, released in July, concluded, “The total gross office space (199,249 square feet) is relatively low for a suburban business center of West Hartford’s size.”
Klebanoff and Udolf said they think the center’s proximity to Hartford, limited traffic and prosperous atmosphere will draw businesses from the city. Udolf said his renovation already has attracted a large legal firm away from its Hartford quarters.
Town officials also are spending a lot of time and money to encourage the center’s development, something uncharacteristic for a government that usually sides with residents against business in an effort to maintain the town’s suburban character.
Last spring, the Chamber of Commerce concluded in a stern report that the government’s consistent stand against development had cost the town a significant amount of tax money and its reputation in the business community.
Now, however, the town is in the midst of a three-year study primarily intended to determine how it can intensify development, thereby broadening its tax base, without changing the town’s character.
As a town, West Hartford has reached maturity, meaning most of the developable land is gone. Without a growing tax base, officials are concerned that homeowners will face persistent steep increases in their taxes.
The town’s study so far has identified West Hartford Center as one of the most under-utilized business areas in town.
By comparing the value of buildings with the value of the land on which they sit, the report concluded the area has “an unusually high occurrence of under-utilized parcels for a central business district.”
“Reinvestment in many town center parcels would appear to make economic sense from the perspective of the private sector,” the report said.
If the center’s plans have an Achilles’ heel, it is inadequate parking. A short time ago town traffic officials estimated that a multilevel garage would not be needed for almost five years.
With the recent development, however, town officials devised a temporary solution to the parking problems my removing the walls dividing some of the parking lots to create larger areas. They also hope to see construction of a garage started by next summer.
Klebanoff and his associates have proposed a garage behind their property, knowing that their dreams of a taller building are impossible without it. Udolf also has proposed a garage and town officials are looking at a third site.
Simmons, of the chamber, has asked for a garage as soon as possible, while center euphoria is still on developer’s minds. “Right now we’ve got the people who would like to spend the money and they’ve got the money. I don’t think we have any major problems.”
