An ongoing $19.4 million effort by the City of Hartford to build a 32,000-square-foot mixed-use building — combining a new health department headquarters with ground-floor retail space — is in line to receive an emergency $700,000 boost. Capital Region Development Authority leaders are proposing the capital infusion after unexpectedly finding a patch of subsurface pollution at the vacant 2.3-acre city-owned lot at the corner of Albany Avenue and Woodlawn Street. The city and Grow America — a nonprofit developer partnered in the building effort — have applied for a roughly $1.5 million state brownfield cleanup grant to help defray costs, even as project leaders try to identify the scope of the newly discovered pollution and the real cost to remediate it, CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said Thursday. The project is about 40% complete. Any stoppage due to an out-of-balance budget would end up increasing costs, Freimuth warned.
Unexpected pollution, drainage issues add cost to new Hartford municipal/retail building
