[joe143]

Hey everyone. I was wondering if hartford is planning on adding anything more to their skyline soon. Wikipedia has a good write up on whats been done recently. Id love to see more towers in Hartford.

[uconn99]

In the short term (5 years) probably no big additions. However within the next 10 years there is a good chance a new condo tower where the closed down YMCA is located will pop up. Plans call for a 400+ ft building around 40 floors over looking the park. I believe the plans are on hold right now but once the housing market picks up a bit and the demand warrants you probably will see this happen. There are plans on the web somewhere showing what it will look like.


Also, Front street district might have a condo tower or 2 go up in the next 5-10 years, thats the plan anyways.

As for office towers, I doubt you will see any new ones built in downtown that will make an impact on the skyline any time soon. Downtowns vacancy rate needs to go down a lot more for this to happen and hope a new company either moves form the burbs downtown or from out of region downtown.

Back in the 1980's and early 90's Hartford had many high rise projects get canceled because of the recession. Just imagine what the skyline would like today if those got built. There were plans for a 60 floor 860 foot building which would have been the largest in New England and plans for 3-4 other 40+ floor towers. These were all approved and ready to be built but the recession just killed them off. Too bad.

IMO Hartford's skyline is great as it is right now. There are some spots downtown which we need to focus on filling in the density and 5-10 floor buildings would do that great. I wouldn't be surprised to see a tower go in where WFSB and the clarion hotel is. That spots needs some redevelopment bad now that WFSB is gone and Clarion hasn't been there for years.

[joe143]

yeah the fact that we are facing another recesion probably dosnt help. I like hartfords skyline,i just wish it was more dense. But i suppose we need a bigger population there before that happens

[uconn99]

This is what might get built where the old YMCA is near Bushnell Park.




Original Front street proposal-





NY Times article from 1987

NY Times article about 1980's Hartford towers

Unbuilt Hartford Towers

[uconn99]

This is how Hartford's skyline would have looked if those towers were built in the 80's.

[uconn99]

Hartford's skyline is still impressive.


http://www.ctchristians.com/misc/hartford07.jpg (broken link)







And to think Hartford/Springfield isn't one metro area! A rare shot of both skylines-

[JViello]

Hartford's DT is very dense compared to many other cities. IMO it's the one city in our state that has that kind of density and buildings.

Here is another view of the "proposed" buildings.



I always said that all of Hartford's development went to Charlotte in the 90's as most of what was proposed actually got built down there.

UCONN: That first pic is actually on my server. I get so many hits and "links" to it it's amazing.

Here are a few more.



http://www.ctchristians.com/misc/hartford01.jpg (broken link)

This one is one of my all time favorites:

[glxyman21]

The Cutter Financial Center would of been a nice addition to Hartford, Unfortunatly something like this won't be built in the near future.

[netdragon]

Originally Posted by uconn99

This is what might get built where the old YMCA is near Bushnell Park.

That building rendering looks just like a building I've seen in Atlanta. I forget where though. Interestingly, the building over the Civic Center looks just like each of the buildings in a cluster of new buildings I saw in southern Harlem when taking the train in from Greenwich.

Hartford needs to put money into neighborhood revitalizations and streetscape projects to increase mid-to-high income population density. If that is done, land value will increase and more high-rises will be built. I think focusing on more high-rise building would be a mistake. Hartford already has a skyline that's larger than most cities its size.

[joe143]

I think its too bad those buildings didnt go up. I think they would have looked really nice. I think an impressive skyline draws people to the city