Hartford officials on Thursday marked the start of exterior demolition at a long-vacant, five-story former data center for another phase of redevelopment around the downtown baseball stadium.
The city is using $10 million in state funding to demolish the hulking, concrete building at 150 Windsor St., which occupies roughly 3 acres immediately north of the ballpark.
The building is expected to be taken down within 60 days, with the property cleared and graded during the first quarter of 2027.
Demolition work began several months ago, when crews began removing hazardous building materials from the interior of the building, constructed in 1968. Thursday marked the beginning of demolition of its exterior.
The former data center had fallen into severe disrepair after years of abandonment. Vandals had damaged the interior, stripping away most of the copper. Discarded drug needles, refuse left by trespassers and batteries from power saws used by metal thieves were among the debris left behind.
The demolition will open the property for redevelopment by Stamford-based RMS Cos., which has already completed 507 apartments around Dunkin’ Park and envisions eventually building roughly 2,500 apartments in the surrounding neighborhood and on the nearby former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus.
RMS founder and CEO Randy Salvatore, who attended Thursday’s ceremony, said he continues to favor a combination of apartments and a boutique hotel for the former data center site, although plans remain preliminary.
In September, Salvatore outlined a potential development featuring a 120-room boutique hotel and up to 250 apartments.
“I would say that’s right now, if you would ask me what I’m thinking,” Salvatore said Thursday when asked whether that concept remains his preference. “But now we need to really sit down, get back with the architects, do the planning.”
Salvatore said he expects to have a clearer development concept within the next few months, following renewed discussions with city officials and other stakeholders.
The property is among four city-owned development sites around Dunkin’ Park that Hartford previously made available to RMS under a long-term development agreement.
The data center site had also been considered as a location for a state-backed artificial intelligence training and business development center. In August, however, Gov. Ned Lamont announced the AI center would instead be located at the State House Square office complex downtown.
Salvatore said that decision, along with the city’s demolition plans, clears the way for more detailed redevelopment discussions.
Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, on Thursday, described the demolition as another step toward transforming an area once dominated by vacant buildings and surface parking lots into a neighborhood connecting downtown Hartford with the city’s North End.
The mayor credited Salvatore, the state Department of Economic and Community Development, the Capital Region Development Authority and other partners with helping advance redevelopment around the ballpark. Arulampalam also used an excavator to knock out a boarded-up window in a ceremonial start to the exterior demolition.
State funding for the demolition includes $8 million through DECD’s brownfield remediation program and $2 million through an Urban Act grant.
DECD Deputy Commissioner Matthew Pugliese said the state’s brownfield program aims to return blighted and unproductive properties to productive use, generating private investment and adding taxable property to municipal grand lists.
Andy Bessette, an executive of Travelers Cos. who is also vice chair of the CRDA Board of Directors, said Thursday he has wanted to see the deteriorating building removed for decades.
The demolition represents another milestone in a redevelopment effort that began more than a decade ago with construction of Dunkin’ Park, home of the Hartford Yard Goats.
RMS completed The Pennant, a 270-unit apartment building southeast of the stadium, in 2022. This spring, it began leasing apartments at The Portrait, a 237-unit building on a 5-acre parcel southwest of the ballpark.
The developer has also begun site work for a 286-unit apartment building on the same parcel, supported in part by an $18 million low-interest CRDA loan.
Beyond North Crossing, RMS owns the former 12.7-acre Rensselaer campus at 275 Windsor St., which it acquired for $3.82 million in late 2023. Salvatore envisions substantial residential development there, potentially mixed with commercial, cultural or institutional uses.
Together, the North Crossing and Rensselaer projects could eventually accommodate approximately 2,500 apartments, Salvatore has estimated, although the final number and mix of uses remain uncertain.
The data center site occupies sits between the ballpark and the former Rensselaer campus, offering an opportunity to connect existing and planned development into a more cohesive neighborhood.
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