After years of efforts, CT housing complex to be redeveloped. What to know about timing, rent cost

A long-delayed, $64 million redevelopment of rundown Martin Luther King Apartments will launch next week — first proposed five years ago but the plans ran up against a pandemic that pushed costs higher and led to a major revamp of the project.

The 1960s-era MLK Apartments in Hartford — a just a short walk from downtown in the shadow of the iconic blue, onion-shaped dome in the Colt complex — will be torn down and replaced by 155 garden-style and townhouse apartment arranged around a green. The new design will replace the brick, public housing complex that has been vacant for more than a year — its tenants relocated to other temporary housing while the new complex is built.

Sheldon Oak Central Inc., the Hartford-based housing non-profit that owns the complex and is partnering in the redevelopment, said financing closed late last week, giving a much-need measure of relief that the redevelopment can now proceed. Construction — including the demolition of the existing complex — is expected to take about 18 months.

“That’s the best feeling,” Emily Wolfe, the non-profit’s executive director, said. “You no longer have to say, ‘I promise it’s going to get done’ because now there is going to be work going on very soon.”

The cost of the project soared nearly 30% from $50 million just a little over two years ago, in part because of the pandemic. That led to funding gaps that had to be filled.

The higher costs also fundamentally changed what tenants will be able to live in the complex. Initially, the redevelopment had been conceived as a mixed-income project, but that was changed to entirely “affordable” because more funding was available for housing restricted to certain income levels.

“There is definitely a shortage of housing — affordable, any rental housing but certainly affordable family housing,” Wolfe said. “It’s going to be a really great project for the neighborhood.”

Wolfe has long pointed to a crisis of housing affordability throughout Connecticut, but particularly in Hartford, that is deepening. Rents are rising at double-digit rates, pricing an increasing number of would-be tenants out of the market. It also is critical, Wolfe has said, to provide that longtime Hartford residents can afford to remain living in their neighborhoods.

Three-quarters of the 155 apartments will be pegged to working households, making 60% or less of the area’s median income. For a household of four, the median income in the neighborhood is $118,000, with 60% of that number about $71,000. The estimated rents will range from $1,200 for one bedroom to $1,700 for three bedrooms.

The remaining 38 units will qualify for federal Section 8 housing subsidies that require tenants to pay 30% of their income for housing. The MLK Apartments previously did not have Section 8 approval.

The financing for the project includes a $20.5 million loan from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority; $27.2 million in low-income tax credits; $11.7 million from state and federal housing funds, $3.7 million from the state’s Community Investment Fund, plus other sources.

Construction crews will start moving onto the Van Block Avenue site next week, with demolition of the buildings beginning later in June. A ceremonial groundbreaking is scheduled for June 24.

Residents who were relocated from the MLK Apartments will have the first chance at returning to the redeveloped complex.

Sheldon Oak is partnering with affordable housing developer Vesta Corp. on the project.

The project has been seen as the last major piece of a revitalization plan from the 1990s in Hartford’s Sheldon/Charter Oak neighborhood. The area of the city has been transformed the revitalization of the once-decaying Colt manufacturing plant, the Capewell Horse Nail Co. factory, the Dutch Point housing complex and Dillon — now Trinity Health — Stadium. The efforts also included the construction of the Sport and Medical Sciences Academy, a magnet middle and high school.

“We’ve been eagerly anticipating this for quite some time,” Chris McArdle, president of CSS/CON, Sheldon/Charter Oak’s neighborhood revitalization zone, said Monday. “The fact that due to supply chain issues and financing issues, the project was delayed for an unexpected length of time.

The delay, McArdle said, led to issues with trespassers breaking into the vacant MLK structures, some of them lighting fires.

“We’ll all be very happy to see them come down and work get underway,” McArdle said. “We look forward to welcoming old neighbors back to the neighborhood  in 18 months and new neighbors that will be moving in. It’s great news for the neighborhood, and great news for the folks call MLK home.”

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.