Chessplayer

Small-Town Campaign Waged By Developers In Preston By ERIC GERSHON {sodEmoji.{sodEmoji.|}} Courant Staff Writer June 30, 2008 PRESTON - Larry Gottesdiener and John Hanselman want the same thing: the right to spend the better part of $1 billion to transform the abandoned state asylum here into a riverfront playground. But only one man can win, and currying favor with the local power elite

Who cares what they want? Half of the time it's about exerting power simply for the sake of it, small minds collectively trying to stomp out bold ideas. Look at their concerns; it just reeks of contrarians. Concerns about the economy? Concerns about losing identity? Vague and specious, easy to make and difficult to refute without time, money, and concessions (community bribery).

Like almost all Trump projects (except Trump World Tower in NY), this is okay: skinny, clean, but uninspired.

There are definitely some admirable qualities in this plan, but as a whole there is too much parking and too few residential units. The buildings are also far too short to justify their mammoth footprints. Looking at the 1950/2008/2020 photos of route 34 is depressing as well; why not aim to recreate the sort of scale that was there before?

Excellent news. Will this be a corner parcel?

City narrows developer list By Mary E. O'Leary, Register Topics Editor NEW HAVEN

I'm always of the opinion that parks are a waste of urban rivers. They should be developed with cafes, restaurants, retail, hotels, and residences, all intimately scaled yet thoroughly urban. The most "park" a river should have is a wide sidewalk alongside it, connecting all the attractions with each other and the water.

New Haven's skyline was its best when it was only this:

New Haven is Connecticut's premier urban space and has a lot going on. If we ever got a dedicated poster from the area, the SW CT subforum would quickly get crowded with N.H. threads. I think this is change for the better, and I'll try to do a part in keeping this section active.

This is more like it. My only complaint is that they could do some facade work with the connecting piece. Variety could be added to the streetscape by making it look like a different building, thus making the block look like a collection of three developments instead of one. That being said, it's thin and the shape culminates well; the taller portion even seems to reference the Harkness Tower. Dodged a bullet with this one. Shartenberg got worse, this one got better. I suppose it roughly equals out.

Ooph. What happened to the lovely, thin building in the previous rendering? Another fat one for a city which already has too many - at least it'll fit right in. Pedestrian revolution? This thing squats down on an entire block and its parking garage takes up half of the streetscape. There's even a useless plaza as well. Increased downtown residents is a plus, but New Haven shouldn't allow its streets to be sacrificed in this manner.

In America this means modernist ideas of space and car-centric development - in Stamford this means fat, stubby office towers with behemoth parking garages and squat residential towers abutting stupidly placed plazas (or worse, more parking). There is a walkable/urban part of Stamford - I was just there on Friday on my way to visit New York - but it is largely prewar. Of course (barring New Haven) it's not that other CT cities are any better.

I'll admit to only driving through it and by it, but the vibe I got was definitely not "urban." I will make sure to check it out in detail over the Summer. From the looks of it (Live Search) there are some cool areas around Bedford/Atlantic St., Summer St., and Main/Bank St.

Sorry to dredge up a comment from a few months ago, but what exactly impresses you about Stamford? I've always found the cityscape to be banal and its "skyscrapers" to have the worst kind of stubby office park-type designs.

Nothing we don't know already, but a decent article on Bradley's new administrator and the state of the industry: http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news5554.html

viable Coltsville -> healthier city -> greater likelihood of arena -> greater likelihood of NHL team? At least that was the benefit of the doubt I gave the questioner.

Probably not. But it's worthy in its own right.

Exciting news; any information on when an announcement might be made - if it were to be made?

What was his rationale?

My friends and I used to hang around there all the time; after a while we even started referring to Middletown by its name. I think we liked the idea of how ridiculous it was to drive 15 miles to visit a coffee shop. My other favorite small city in CT is New London. Do you have any friends out there?

Downtown Middletown is great - the feel is much more authentic than West Hartford Center. My friends and I often drive there to walk around and eat.

I disagree. In my opinion, residential is the absolute key to any sort of retail success downtown. The 115 apartments were satisfactory only because we were promised a phase two, which hopefully was to include far more residential. Otherwise while Front Street may have some initial success, it will be due to novelty and won't bring suburbanites downtown in the long run. In addition, no amount of retail will be able to exclusively survive off of the convention crowd - it's just too sporadic.

Oh, the revisions are in the quotations. Like I said, I just moved some words around and fixed some grammatical errors. If you want to write more I'd be glad to contribute ideas/edit it. One thing I'd add to any letter is a short description of the type of people who post here; it'd carry more weight to say that many of us do have credentials and/or a direct stake in the success of Hartford, rather than just a group of idle office workers and college students.

Thanks for writing this. I just fixed a few grammatical errors and moved a couple words around. I hear you. What a mess this is.

An article about BDL from the HBJ: http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news4635.html Funds Smack Bradley Passenger Traffic Drops, construction more than two years behind schedule By, Jonathan G. Fox While funding issues pushed the final phase of Bradley International Airport’s $200 million construction project more than two years behind schedule, the airport has also been taking a hit from the airline industry, which is moving its longer flights from regional airports to larger hubs. Airport officials blame a significant drop in passenger traffic over the past two years to the fact that regional airports have fallen out of favor with some airlines, not its construction delay. Nearly 900,000 fewer passengers traveled through Bradley over the past two years, dropping its record of 7.4 million in 2005 to 6.5 million in 2007. . . . . . Is this drop in traffic simply an industry phenomenon/a symptom of a bad economy or is there something that the Bradley administrators are missing? Beyond finishing construction, what can be done to correct this?