Fascinating thread for me because not only was I born and raised in Hartford, but for most of my adult life until 15 years ago I worked on funding for apartments, both government rent subsidized and unsubsidized in all of CTs cities. I’ve been mostly out of the loop since then and am marginally aware of some of the newer places in Hartford. The older places that were aimed at younger people were what was at one time called Underwood Towers on Park near Sigourney, the Bushnell Apts and Condos on Main across from the Atheneum, apts at the corner of Main and Capital Ave (weird, with huge bathrooms and small master bedrooms), the Goodwin on Asylum and the lofts in the old Brown Thompson building near City Steam.
Hartford was really struggling then and Bridgeport was worse. Almost all of the big public housing projects have been long since demolished in all the cities. Bridgeport has big issues regarding replscng those units. Downtown Bridgeport was really dead. There was a guy in my office from Bridgeport and we used to tease each other on which city was better. We sat on a working group dealing with Bridgeport problems. In a big meeting one day, our director, after having us go over the problems we were working on, asked each of us what was good about the city. When it was my turn, I looked straight at my Bridgeport buddy and said “they have highway entrances”. He nearly fell off his chair. Bridgeport had one special downtown revitalization problem. It’s Main Street downtown was unusually narrow. They were also messed up for a few years by claims of land ownership by the minuscule Golden Hill Paugusset tribe which led to title problems.
