Bridgeport”™s downtown is flourishing with economic activity. Businesses are setting up shop, multimillion-dollar construction projects are breaking ground and consultants are finalizing designs to develop the city”™s second train station.
Over the past several years, Bridgeport”™s downtown has become the gateway to bringing developments, tax dollars and jobs to the entire city, Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch said.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Finch said. “We have five investment teams investing in downtown buildings. John Morris is opening up Bass Pro Shops, and we have Gary Flocco at Corvus Capital, U-Haul, RemGrit, GE and DuPont all working with us. We have a very cooperative attitude when it comes to our administration working with investors.”
The projects the mayor cited are:
Ӣ Bass Pro Shops is building a retail store at Steelpointe Harbor;
Ӣ Corvus Capital Partners is renovating several derelict factory buildings along Interstate 95;
Ӣ U-Haul is reusing and operating out of an old factory in Bridgeport;
Ӣ RemGrit is the site of the former Remington Arms factory that will be demolished and turned into a second train station. DuPont has spent millions of dollars to clean up the site; and
Ӣ General Electric Co. has a factory site that could be turned into a school.
One recently completed construction project downtown is Landmark, a residential and office building on State Street.
Darien-based real estate firm Forstone Capital L.L.C. recently opened the refurbished site that features apartments ranging between 700 and 1,000 square feet with rents from $1,050 to $1,300. As of Aug. 22, 80 percent of them were occupied.
Landmark occupies the former Mechanics & Farmers Bank building, which had been dilapidated for decades. Forstone Capital bought it for $500,000 in 2009 when the city placed the 50,000-square-foot building on the market. The project received a boost when Fletcher Thompson, an engineering design firm with 60 employees that had left Bridgeport for Shelton in 2002, agreed to rent Landmark”™s office space.
“The project is utilizing historic tax credits,” said Brett Wilderman, partner at Forstone Capital. “The state Department of Housing through the CHAMP (Competitive Housing Assistance for Multifamily Properties) program received financing. It”™s a great public-private partnership that allowed this project to become a reality. The project is owned by a separate entity, and we”™re the partner and manager and developer of it. They lent us the money to take part in the partnership.”
Forstone Capital was awarded $3.3 million for the project from the state through CHAMP. The federal Environmental Protection Agency covered most of the cleanup expenses after the building was declared a brownfield.
With Webster Bank providing the first mortgage and the state Department of Housing, state Department of Economic and Community Development and the city”™s environmental remediation program partnering, the reclaimed building has been revitalized to maintain its historic appearance and renovated with the environment in mind.
“The greenest building is one you don”™t tear down,” Finch said. “Reclaiming these buildings is strategically important. The investment we”™re making is overall to make the city a place you want your kids and grandkids to live because there are employment opportunities, healthy living and a determination to protect the environment.”
The majority of projects at Forstone Capital, which owns and manages a dozen buildings in downtown Bridgeport totaling 600,000 square feet, are mostly office spaces. The firm is interested in converting unused commercial office space into residential apartments as opposed to building projects from scratch, Wilderman said.
“We see a trend in converting the unused commercial space in downtown Bridgeport to residential,” Wilderman said. “We”™re not the only developer doing projects like that.”
Forstone Capital owns and manages about 1 million square feet of building space among 20 properties throughout Bridgeport, New Canaan, Westport, Darien and Stamford.
In Bridgeport, greenhouse gas emissions per household are about seven tons, compared with the national average of about 20 tons per capita of greenhouse gas emissions in the suburbs, Finch said, reinforcing the city”™s commitment to maintaining its eco-friendly reputation.
Millennials are flocking to downtown Bridgeport, Finch said. The majority of Landmark”™s tenants are young professionals in their late 20s, a trend that is stretching across the city”™s downtown as more private and public investors buy abandoned properties and turn them into residential buildings and business hubs that attract startup companies.
With an uptick in millennials, Bridgeport is seeing a rise in new businesses. In the past few years, about 400 startups emerged in Bridgeport, some of which are owned by millennials. Business incubators and innovation centers are attracting people who are interested in the arts, historic restoration, education and a sustainable agenda to the city, Finch said.
Despite the upward trend in economic development projects in the city, Finch said the biggest delay in getting more projects shovel-ready faster is the bureaucracy of lawyers.
“If you have four funding sources ”” historic tax credits, a brownfield loan, a traditional loan and a construction loan ”” you may have five or six sets of lawyers that all want to opine about the development agreement,” Finch said. “Doing the project takes up one-third of the time it takes to get it past the bureaucracies of lawyers, lenders and regulators. Once you get men and women on-site with hard hats, we fly through the project.”
With more than 200 proposed projects on the city”™s agenda, about seven or eight residential building projects are slated to begin in downtown Bridgeport within the next few months. One of the projects includes the redevelopment of abandoned factories along I-95.
“We”™re going to our city council to talk about phasing in taxes on Corvus”™ development and turning the abandoned factories into over 300 housing units,” Finch said. “We”™re starting to remediate the property by the end of the year to bring it back on the tax rolls.”
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