The long-awaited Port Eastside mega-development got under way in January when contractors began demolishing an empty Bank of America building while East Hartford applied for $15 million in state aid for the project. Heavy equipment has been razing the multi-level concrete parking garage at 99 Founders Plaza for the past several weeks, and then will tear down the 150,000-square-foot former Bank of America offices. Developers then plan to construct 300 apartments in a new five-story complex as the first phase of Port Eastside, East Hartford’s biggest mixed residential and commercial project in recent decades. The long-term plan is to create as many as 1,000 apartments on more than 28 acres across the Connecticut River from downtown Hartford along with new restaurants and entertainment venues. But in the three years since a high-powered development partnership laid out the sprawling concept for nearly 30 acres of prime waterfront property, progress has been measured entirely in paperwork: purchase contracts, financing agreements, tax financing district settlements and the like. The deployment of excavators, bulldozers and dump trucks at the bank site has given East Hartford residents a visual sign of change at Founders Plaza, a collection of office buildings that were modern a generation ago but in decline for the past 10 years or more.
Demolition crews begin ambitious CT mega-project. Called ‘multi-year transformation’
