Most Significant Developments of 2008 [2]

When Harbor Point broke ground this summer it started what could ultimately become one of the largest urban redevelopment efforts in the country.

The South End in recent history has been home to industry and low income housing. As the industrial base diminished, artists and antique dealers filled some of the void in addition to some office complexes along the coast. I95 and the train tracks cut line of demarcation from the downtown and any development that occurred to the North stopped sharp along the border.

Antares recognized some inherent advantages to the neighborhood including proximity to the downtown, access to the train station, and location on the waterfront when assembling 82 acres of abandoned factories and brown fields throughout the South End and proposed a vision of a mixed use community of retail, housing, office, & park space oriented towards the pedestrian. Another firm, Building & Land Technology has since taken over the project. Despite a bad economy, the Harbor Point has moved forward, although Phase One is slightly less ambitious than originally proposed. I’ve also noticed BLT (sweet acronym guys) has choosen to focus almost exclusively on the specific buildings currently under construction on the most recent iteration of their website and is downplaying the overall site plan Antares was previously hyping. I wonder if they are putting some distance to give themselves license to alter plans down the line.

There have been a few controversies – labor isn’t happy about out of state contracts. The developer tried to get around polluted soil in a proposed park by building a mini mountain on top of it – which looked to have been reversed this week after the city objected. The proposed Fairway market was attacked as architecturally uninspired along its street facing walls, but seems to be moving ahead regardless.

Still, Stamford has pushed forward a large scale waterfront development that will only make neighbors like Bridgeport look foolish with their grandiose & unitainable waterfront casino plans.

Harbor Point is definitely the biggest kid on the South End playground, but there is all kinds of funky stuff planned or in progress for this little corner of town. In terms of transportation, the train station is not alone – the idea of a light rail line and ferry dock have been floated, and the Urban Transitway should also wrap soon. In addition to all the Harbor Point parks, Kosciuszko Park (one of the hidden gems in town) continues to be upgraded and the Mill River greenway is expected to reach the Harbor eventually. Other developers have large scale projects on paper for the South End. The Metro Green tower and apartments are planned in back of the train station, hell even the Department of Transportation wants in and is talking about replacing the crumbling transportation center parking garage with mixed use development and supplementing the parking elsewhere (which seems freaking nuts to me, unless the adjacent Metro Green can somehow absorbs the lost parking)

Assuming all of this continues to play out - it will certainly be the largest transformation of Stamford since the original urban redevelopment of the 60's and 70's. While that ushered in a wave of monolith, fortress style development downtown. Harbor Point will hopefully encourage more pedestrian scale communities and an interesting and engaging urban environment.