Adriaen’s ascent
Finally off the drawing board, Adriaen’s Landing rises
By Laurie Ledgard, Hartford Business Journal

Looking back to the enormous amount of underground utility and environmental work we had to do, it’s that much more of a thrill to stand right there on the floor of the new Convention Center exhibit hall,” Halloran said.

“We need things like this to happen in Hartford,” said Dan Matos, who heads the Hartford office of Capital Properties, developer of the Front Street portion of Adriaen’s Landing.

Five years after the concept was first unveiled, today’s version — call it Adriaen’s 4.0 — is a significantly pared-down undertaking from that $1.3 billion dream, but one that remains impressive. Components include the Connecticut Convention Center, a 400-room Marriott Hotel, and the housing/retail area called Front Street in honor of the little neighborhood that once existed where Adriaen’s Landing now rises.

All of this, of course, comes at a price. The costs of the buildings alone are $190 million for the convention center and $77 million for the hotel. Front Street is estimated to cost about $100 million. And it’s all being paid for with a combination of public and private money.

So far, $263.8 million in general obligation bonds have been approved to cover work on the convention center, the underground utility work that preceded it, land acquisition and related site work, according to CCEDA spokesman Matt Fleury. Money approved by the General Assembly in previous legislative sessions, $113.6 million, has also been used to cover a variety of project costs.

A Section 108 loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, for $8 million, will be used in building the hotel. And money designated by CCEDA for downtown residential housing, $12 million, will be used on Front Street.

Additional funds will also be available from CCEDA. Fleury explained that the authority can issue up to $90 million in revenue bonds. Revenues from the sales of those bonds could be used to pay for such items as parking for Front Street or for the energy plant at the convention center.

And then there is still another $218 million in private investment, including investments by Capital Properties and Waterford Group, the developers of the hotel.

As Halloran notes, this public investment in developing Hartford may be paying off. New restaurant and shop owners in the downtown core have said they wanted to open to be ready for Adriaen’s Landing.

And at Front Street, which developers hope will become a hip shopping and entertainment mecca, national retailers are taking a new look at the capital city. That may be because while other markets have had shrinkage, Matos noted, Hartford is showing growth.

“It think everybody who looks at Hartford has this knee-jerk reaction that there’s nothing going on here,” said Matos. “What I think is happening now is that with all the business going on around Hartford, it looks like a healthy area. It’s perceived that opportunity exists here.”

Matos and his team are not ready yet to announce what retailers or restaurants will make up Front Street; no contracts have been signed. But in a few weeks, they will unveil a revised plan that will show more style, while doing away with underground parking and movie theaters that their market studies found didn’t make sense.

The plan still calls for 200 apartments and 150,000 square feet of retail space. Groundbreaking is set for sometime in December or January.

Across the street, the convention center construction is on its way for a target opening date in 2005. Touring the site, one can feel the scope of the facility, where a single exhibition hall stretches for 145,000 square feet.

Eric Wieche is the project superintendent, and works for Hunt/Gilbane, the joint venture created specifically for Adriaen’s Landing by Hunt Construction Group of Indianapolis, Ind., and Gilbane Building Co., of Providence, R.I.

Just behind the giant double-wides that house the construction staff, Wieche pointed out the framework of the grand staircase that will run down the north side of the building. South of the convention center, the parking garage is done, including a wide driveway through the garage for 18-wheel trucks to drive right up and bring their cargo onto the exhibition floor. Another two stories of parking are built under the exhibition floor.

“This is going to be like a thoroughfare,” Fleury said, pointing

to the underground garage entrance. Traffic will eventually be able to move from Grove Street straight into the garage under the main hall. To the right of that entrance is a higher opening for buses.

Work on the hotel, just north of the convention facility, will start in a month, Fleury said, and its construction is being timed to open with the convention center in 2005. High cement pillars are in place to some day frame immense glass windows, providing visitors with views of nearby I-91 and the Connecticut River.

A walk across the floor of what will become the main exhibition hall — a very careful walk around piles of beams, construction equipment, lumber and the occasional puddle — starts in the facility’s lobby.

Looking up, Wieche pointed to giant steel crossbeams that will support the ballroom located one floor above. These 130-ton trusses will carry the load for that floor, a 40,000-square-foot space surrounded by meeting rooms that are estimated to have enough room for more than 7,000 people (or almost the entire population of the town of Brooklyn).

An old pump station that is still part of the flood control system remains standing under the truck ramp leading from the garage. With the convention center built around it, the station’s roof, Wieche said, is just inches below the ramp.

Wieche said he now has about 400 people working each day on the site, in all different trades. Most of the work currently involves heavy building, but there is some electrical work under way in the lower parking level, Wieche said. At its peak, there could be as many as 600 or 700 workers at the site per day.

Of these workers, about 50 are Hartford residents who received training from the Hartford Construction Jobs Initiative, also called the “jobs funnel,” which is an effort to bring training and jobs to Hartford-based workers.

An as yet unseen piece of the development is a building known simply as “the attraction” that will likely be the Connecticut Center for Science and Exploration. In June, Gov. John Rowland named an executive committee to plan for the center. Gov. Rowland will co-chair the committee with Dr. Henry McKinnell, chairman and CEO of Pfizer Inc. Fleury said the committee has met once and may meet again in August or September.