By Deidre Montague, Northend Agent’s
Community members came out to ask questions and learn about steps being taken to bring a full-service grocery store and development of the North Hartford’s Arrowhead Gateway, the area surrounding the intersection of Main Street and Albany Avenue, on Sept. 29.
The project will “provide fresh, affordable, and culturally appropriate food to the North Hartford Promise Zone residents return an estimated 60% of the $38 million currently spent annually by Hartford residents traveling to nearby towns for groceries, create jobs, employing 75 to 90 part-time and 20 to 30 full-time workers in the supermarket alone, with additional retail and health-promoting services generating more positions.”
Co-hosted by the Healthy Hartford Hub Community Action Task Force (CATF) and The City of Hartford, this community conversation included updates on different parts of the Arrowhead Small Area Corridor Master Plan by city staff and development partners, and open discussion about the plan implementation, at The Hartford Yard Goats Club.
After CATF Chair Denise Holter gave her opening remarks, she invited Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam to speak to community members about how this project is about health equity which matters deeply to his administration, and about what the community looks like.
He said that making sure that the downtown area to North Hartford is reconnected and one seamless city is also a priority in his administration, citing progress with the work happening at the apartments across the street from the Yard Goats stadium.
Arulampalam said that this means addressing the cost of housing, as new housing comes into the city and food access.
He also referenced how his administration fought to keep the original $8.5 million that the state allocated to the city for a grocery store from being taken by a development in downtown Hartford early in his administration.
“We are really committed to prioritizing food access and a full scale grocery store in the North End of Hartford…This has been a priority for this administration. This is something that we care deeply about,” he said.
“We understand very well the impact of a lack of access to groceries. It has an impact on all of our residents. I think all of us across the city of Hartford feel the impact of a lack of a full scope grocery store. In North Hartford, that is especially true. We want to be partners. We want to work side by side with you,” he added.
Other local politicans in attendance were former Mayor Eddie Perez, Councilwoman Marilyn E. Rossetti, Councilman Nick Lebron, and Councilman Alexander Thomas.
Another highlight of the community conversation included Kristen Cooksey Stowers, Assistant Professor of Uconn’s Department of Allied Health Sciences, announcing the launch of the North Hartford Health Report.
The report, authored by CATF, Uconn Health Equity Lab for the People, and DataHaven, “supports advocacy for health equity in North Hartford.”
Stowers said that the report is a resident focused data collection effort focusing on North Hartford with solutions and ideas from CATF, as well as plans for what a grocery store would look like plus a hub promoting health services.
There are four key pillars of the Healthy Hartford Hub: a full service grocery store, small business development (with a focus on Black, brown, and women owned businesses), healthy promoting services, and owner occupied homes.
She said that the rationale is for this development and a new grocery store in the area, it will not thrive if people do not have jobs that help them become economically stable and thrive.
“If housing is the issue, the development and the grocery store won’t work. The four pillars of the CATF are a holistic viewpoint of what it will take to make this work successful, and most importantly, to make more Hartford residents healthy and well,” she said.
City Planning & Zoning Division Director Owen Deutsch went through some of the updates that have been made since the Arrowhead plan was first released in 2022.
He spoke the most about Anticello Plaza, saying that outreach began for this project in October 2023. An advisory committee was formed from numerous organizations, meetings held door to door, flyers, a web page that was developed as well as mailers. This was funded largely from state grant funds and city funds.
He said that one of the priorities that was identified was to have the plaza be a community space, a space that can host pop up market and public art performances, outdoor dining, and food trucks, which they made sure to incorporate in the design.
Deutsch said that this was included with supporting community residents in the neighborhood and the retail spaces, as a part of the Arrowhead and Flat Iron buildings, as well as the other businesses on Main Street and the surrounding area.
He also spoke about some of the design that residents will be seeing construction for, as a part of the Arrowhead and Flat Iron Development this year.
Deutsch also talked about there being an arch concept, which echoes through the gateways seen in other parts of the city. It will try to express the idea of the plaza being a gateway between North Harford and downtown.
He also said that since this is closing the Northern dead end portion on Ann Uccello Street, there is somewhat of a loss of parking spaces – yet, there are other parking spaces that are being introduced as part of the broader development project.
After presentations by him and other decision-makers, Holter had community members break into groups based on which of their organization’s four pillars resonates most with them to discuss and create questions to present to city officials and developers in the room.
For the small business group, Semilla Cafe Co-Owner Aimee Chambers shared her concerts about what the plan is to get more Hartford residents to have access or to be prioritized in commercial spaces.
“One thing that we all need to be clear about is, although we have a lot of vacant space in the city, we don’t have a lack of small businesses, and in particular, we don’t have a lack of Black owned businesses. We have a lack of access to space. We have a lack of access to capital,” she said.
“We need to be more intentional about how we make those connections. One of the things that we can encourage developers to do is to think a little bit about creative use of these spaces,” she added.
For the Health Promoting Services group, community member Talia Orr said that there is a need for a pharmacy that people can access, as many that were previously available have since closed.
“The CVS’s are so far away that you can’t get to them that you can trust. They will send you your medicine. They do have a lot of pharmacies, but according to your medical plan, you may not be able to access that. So it’s necessary that we have a pharmacy in the north end that people can get to – Blue Hill, Main Street, not just downtown…,” she said,
She shared that bus shelters should be built on Main Street – just as they were for Blue Hills, and that there needs to be a priority to provide an accessible child clinic for community youth.
“How come Main Street always (has) to wait and be last in everything?… You’re gonna put bus shelters on Blue Hills and tell us two or three years later, you’re gonna put them on Main Street. Make that make sense to me. When we got children over there, just like they (are) on Blue Hills,” she said.
“The clinic should be a priority, just as big as this little almost Bodega shopping center,” she added.
Lastly, Holter shared why it is important to host community conversations like this recent one.
“It’s business as usual for any service provider to, for the most part, come into a neighborhood and tell residents what services they need, should have and are going together – that model no longer exists. It’s the neighbors who…I tend to say, move kitchen table conversations to the board,” she said.
“We are the experts in our lives, and the people who build businesses in our city, who work for our city, who are elected to represent us in city government, need to understand that they exist for us,” she added.
She also said that it can be all too easy for public service professionals to see a need and lean on their expertise to create a solution – not considering all of the community needs, which cause residents to feel the impact the most – for better or worse.
“We know through lived experience that very frequently that falls short on the system. So rather than squander opportunities, squander resources, waste energy, reinventing the wheel or redoing something that doesn’t work,” she said.
“Let’s all come together, find out what the needs are, what the possibilities are, and how we can work together to make that happen. That way, those of us who are investing in our own well being have a say about the outcome,” she added.
Photo by Lum3n: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-vegetables-in-market-319798/
