City's chances come and go quickly

1/11/09

It's hard to avoid the feeling Bridgeport missed its chance. The window of opportunity was narrow, but it was real. For a few months there, with the economy chugging along and housing prices soaring, and the demand for luxury accommodations spiraling upward, the city had a chance to fill a void in the local market.

The rest of Fairfield County had outpriced the population. Bridgeport, it was thought, could become the home for people who needed to live in the area but had to forget about anything between here and New York. And maybe the city could snag some of that luxury overflow, as well.

Projects that had hung around the back burner suddenly attracted attention from big-name developers. Fallow land was slated for condominium towers, brownfields were to be cleaned and marinas prepared to take root in the Sound.

The scene today looks a bit different. Barely a peep has been heard about the various mega-projects around town, and the smaller-scale deals have nearly ground to a halt, as well. A nationwide housing collapse will do that.

The first real sign of trouble came in what was shaping up to be the first new housing construction downtown in decades. The corner of Fairfield Avenue at Lafayette Circle not too long ago was nothing but grass, but on the site sprang the makings of an 84-unit condo complex, to be built, its backers said, without using any public money. This was Bridgeport coming into its own.

It hasn't worked out that way. Despite a deal last April where the City Council granted the right to sell the condos at a lower rate to entice buyers, the building has for months sat half-finished. There's been no sign of construction restarting, and it's safe to say the active winter weather is not helping matters.

It's not that there hasn't been progress downtown -- the stretch of Fairfield Avenue next to the condo construction has refashioned itself as a destination for new restaurants, and work continues on a number of vacant buildings undergoing a retrofit for housing.

But there, too, the reality is a long way from the promise. The Citytrust building is occupied, but the retail and restaurants slated for the ground floor have not panned out. Work continues at other buildings, slowly -- even the boarded-up disaster at 333 State St., at the corner of Lafayette Boulevard, has seen some activity in recent weeks.

But it's the large-scale projects that look to be on life support, or worse. At last report, the condominium towers and marina to be built at the end of Main Street, next to Seaside Park, were stalled by a dispute over oyster beds in the Sound. In the interim, with the economy falling apart, the market for high-end housing in a neighborhood of decrepit buildings and a total lack of services has not grown.

Then there is the site that brought former NBA star turned high-powered developer Magic Johnson to the city. Next to the Harbor Yard complex, the lot was going to feature movie theaters, an 11-story hotel, thousands of square feet of retail and dozens of residences. For a time, a top concern was that the complex would turn inward, away from the city streets, and do little to help the surrounding neighborhood draw foot traffic. Today, it appears not much of anything will happen there.

Finally, of course, is Steel Point. A few decades ago, a long-gone city administration bulldozed a neighborhood, including dozens of houses and tax-paying businesses. In their place, the city has been granted some awfully attractive artist renderings of what the Bridgeport skyline could look like in some alternate universe.

It's not the fault of city leaders the housing market died, and priorities have taken a drastic turn. Now City Hall is trying to close a budget deficit before the end of the fiscal year, with no one talking much about what the revenue stream will look like the following year, or the year after that. It won't be pretty.

For a city that has suffered a generations-long run of bad luck, it's hard to think the opportunity to turn things around hasn't come and gone. The next time the stars align could be far in the future.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. He can be reached at 203-330-6233 or at hbailey@ctpost.com.