Hartfordite

It's a bad practice. Northland bought the Metrocenter in 1997; i know that. I am familiar with Northland's portfolio. People should see how Northland treats it's tenants and their properties. Maybe if some of you got out of your SUVs for a second and not just looking at the skyline from the interstate; people would know better.

They all want free money. Like the many cheap gold-plated opportunistic slumlords that have sprouted up recently; Matos, Kenney and Gottesdiener. Meanwhile, where's our retail? Ask King Eddie; who spearheaded that awful Charter Oak Marketplace drawing even more potential retail resources out of the downtown landscape. Or Mr. Matos who believes that his precious Cabela's strip mall is "within walking distance" of the downtown. Rowland's failed Hartford urban revitalization policy has done nothing but attract many bottom feeders to an urban real-estate utopia that in reality never existed. To make for themselves with as little personal committment or sacrifice as possible their own little egotistical side show. State policy-makers have done nothing to change the overall municipal system in this state that has systematically destroyed Connecticut cities and towns one by one. Thats the real issue nobody has the courage to address. A regional planning failure that will continue to haunt this state for decades as more and more smart urban-minded folks leave!

I wish Nitgin would just build the damn thing and stop talking about it. Scale back the parking. Build small scale tastefully built buildings like the above shot are best. Why can't people focus on developing the existing downtown? We have NO RETAIL! Northland is busy rent gouging and driving out successful tenents like they think somehow downtown is 5th Avenue. They get state subsidies to screw peple over. Perez is busy running around promoting the drab Charter Oak Marketplace and other cheap sprawl-marts; meanwhile, downtown still dies after 6:00pm and has no retail. There are thousands of people downtown every single day yet with every suburban strip mall they throw up, the harder it will be to develope the downtown properly. To keep people in the city and attract new people, all the developement must be centered in the city limits, not on the outskirts; not in the suburbs. No property owner must hold property ransom like Northland does. They can make so much $$ if they would recall their greedy strategy and get real about thir properties value.

None of those projects should have been allowed to be built!!! Evergreen Walk is one of those cop-out "new urbanism" strip mall schemes built by the local and municipal land whores on sprawling hills and fields of the once picturesqe Connecticut countryside. Everything there should be concentrated in the city. It's a no brainer to witness the fact that every town in this state competes for the same junk on a flawed and broken state charter! Reorganization of state government is paramount to a revitilization of the city! County wide government bodies are key to the centralization of growth and urban developement. They should have foresight and reflect a 100 year timetable. Bill Curry had many proposals about county government in 2002. The cities are where things must concentrate. Think of how much better off Connecticut would be if it adopted that system in the last century. The car is not a neutral actor on the urban landscape; the car brings mobility, and it brings problems. People in this country only see the mobility; they don't see the problems.