Middletown Pegged for Integrated Downtown Housing, Retail Pilot Program

The city is one of three muncipalities chosen for a pilot Main Street revitalization project that teams downtown advocates, developers and smaller building owners with the tools to redevelop vacant or underutilized buildings.

Connecticut Main Street Center selected Middletown, Torrington and Waterbury to participate in its new Come Home to Downtown mixed-use real estate program. 

In fact, executive director of the Downtown Business District Quentin Phipps says a new book to be published this summer features Middletown as one of 14 cities across the United States, "which focuses on residential development, immigration strategies, civic functionality, heritage tourism, and good design practice," according to "Resilient Downtowns: A New Approach to Revitalizing Small and Medium City Downtowns" by Michael Burayidi.

"In all the places he visited," Phipps said, "he said he'd never seen a spirit of cooperation and communication like we have in Middletown. In fact, the monthly [Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce] Central Business Bureau meeting is completely unprecedented in the entire nation."

So, it's not surprising the CMSC chose Middletown for the project, which will come up with new tools to strengthen economic health and restore vitality to these downtowns, making the development of viable housing opportunities and the improvement of these neighborhoods possible.

The goal of Come Home to Downtown is to attract developers and "mom-and-pop" building owners to redevelop underused buildings with a mix of uses and housing choices, according to the CMSC. It will also provide local public and private champions and partners with strategic tools to allow them to create or enhance a strong downtown management program.

Last July, the Downtown Business District came up with an Organizational Development Strategy, 2012-2015, after Carmody Consulting reviewed previous planning efforts and visited the city to tour downtown and nearby neighborhoods, meet with key stakeholders, and held a goal-setting session with the DBD Board of Commissioners.

"Our partners at CMSC realize our record of success already with having a dynamic and diverse and growing downtown and with the spirit of cooperation between our many partners — the city, the DBD, Chamber, developers," Phipps said.

"We already have a history of all working with one another every day on several other projects so it really made sense to continue with those that are really doing well already. They thought it was an ideal place to make a community investment."

The Come Home to Downtown project is a continuation from the results found in the strategic plan, which concluded stakeholders must move Middletown's downtown "from good to great" in three ways.

• Building a diverse downtown residential neighborhood in vacant and under-used upper-floor space and on vacant land. 

• Strengthening the business mix by maintaining office and hospitality clusters and by enhancing the retail sector. 

• Improving the connections between downtown and the university, the hospital, the riverfront, and the North End.

The final mixed-use real estate program "will definitely be on Main Street," Phipps said, although the property that is being looked at now has not been made public. "Ideally what we would be looking at is retail on first floor, like our zoning regulations require, and upstairs, a diverse offering of housing."

CMSC will kick off the program in each pilot community in early January, beginning with the collection of data, building analysis and the coordination of community engagement activities. It will work in with these three cities, exploring their downtown redevelopment issues in-depth and creating new strategies that respond to changing demographics and market dynamics.

The CMSC pilot was created in partnership with the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, through a $250,000 investment using Community Investment Act Program funding.

Work will continue throughout the summer on consensus building, a downtown development audit for each of the towns, model building analysis, assistance to small-property owners who demonstrate a desire to redevelop their properties to include housing, and downtown management organizational development.

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