Hartford mayor’s legacy leaving office. And what’s next.

Mayor Luke Bronin’s toughest challenge leading Hartford — pulling the city back from the brink of municipal bankruptcy — came in the early days of his administration and might get lost in two terms that were more recently dominated by a bruising, life-changing global pandemic.

“It’s easy to forget — eight years on — just how severe and apparently insurmountable the fiscal crisis was,” Bronin said. “I said at the time that the one thing we refuse to do is just buy a little time or piece it together for another year. If we didn’t come together — not just to avert crisis — but to lay the foundation that we could build on, then nothing else we would do in the years that followed would have mattered.”

Bronin chose not to run for a third term, and his tenure will end in a week. He will be succeeded by Mayor-Elect Arunan Arulampalam.

Bronin’s administration was marked by big-picture redevelopment; an aggressive push for mixed-income housing downtown and increasingly, in the neighborhoods, to spur revitalization; a pandemic that dramatically altered downtown’s office market and spawned a surge in gun violence; and the fallout from firing the first developers of Hartford’s minor league ballpark that hung over Bronin’s administration for years.

But Bronin’s biggest test was on the front of city finances.

Supporters — and critics — credit Bronin with reining in city spending, fueled by runaway borrowing. They also say Bronin — whether you agreed with him or not on a particular issue — started rebuilding confidence in City Hall where a former mayor in 2010 resigned over corruption charges.

“We were completely out of control when it came to our financial situation,” Hyacinth Yennie, chair of the Maple Avenue Revitalization Group, or MARG, said. “Like everybody else, you have a household, you know how much money you have and how much you can spend. He didn’t overspend. He didn’t borrow things that he knew he couldn’t pay back.”

Bronin often has pointed out that the city has not taken on any more debt since 2016.

The linchpin was a state-financed bailout in 2018 that provides about $40 million annually over 20 years to pay off $550 million in city general obligation debt. The massive bailout was paired with concessions from the city labor unions, dozens of layoffs and elimination of municipal positions and millions of dollars in spending cuts.

In October, the state’s oversight of the city’s finances eased but still remains.

At a meeting of the Municipal Accountability Review Board, Bronin said: “I want to stress as I’ve said many times publicly, and in this forum, that our progress is very real and also fragile. I think it needs to be protected and defended with similar rigor in the years going forward.”

As Bronin prepares to step away from city hall, he will start teaching a course at the Yale Law School, where he earned his juris doctor degree. In addition, Bronin will do private consulting on public policy issues.

Another step in Bronin’s political career also could be in the picture.

Midway through his first term as Hartford’s mayor, Bronin considered a run for governor in a crowded field. He proved to be an impressive fundraiser, but abandoned the aspiration, saying in 2018, “I don’t want people taking shots at Hartford in order to take shots at me.”

Now, Bronin says it is too early in the second term of Gov. Ned Lamont, a fellow Democrat, to be talking about an election that’s three years away. But if Lamont were to decide against running again. Bronin — now 44 — would likely be waiting in the wings.

“Yes, I think that is something I would probably do,” Bronin said. “I love this work. I love building a team. I love bringing people together around a common vision and tackling tough problems. And I love doing work that communities can see and feel.”

Thoughtful but tenacious

As mayor, Bronin quickly honed a reputation for a thoughtful but tenacious approach, especially when it came to redevelopment.

Michael W. Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority, worked closely with Bronin throughout the last eight years. Often on the phone with each other multiple times a week, CRDA was instrumental in providing the state taxpayer-backed loans that filled financing gaps in development projects downtown and in city neighborhoods.

Bronin did not consider projects in isolation, but how they would fit into into a development puzzle that would accomplish a larger goal, Freimuth said.

“Certain projects change the context of everything else,” Freimuth said. “And all the projects really don’t go far unless this transformational project happens. He’s been able to identify what in my mind is transformational.”

The mixed-use development on a swath of barren parking lots around Dunkin’ Park, the city’s minor league stadium, is one example. North Crossing’s developer last year completed the first phase of 270 units and is now moving on to a second phase across the street.

The construction will certainly give a much-needed boost to the city’s tax base but it also will accomplish a larger goal: reconnecting downtown with the North End, separated for more than two generations by the 1960s-era construction of Interstate 84.

“This sea of surface parking has divided our community for so long and really the most important part of all of this is reconnecting our neighborhoods, getting our neighborhoods back together with this development,” Bronin said, at a groundbreaking Friday marking the start on construction this winter on the second phase.

“That physical connection is really important,” Bronin said. “It’s important that anyone who is working or living in or visiting the downtown feels that they are part of one united city.”

More than 2,000 apartments could be built in the future on both the parking lots around the ballpark and the adjacent former campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The 13-acre RPI property was recently purchased by RMS Cos., the same developer as North Crossing.

Those apartments could be part of the 5,000 or more units of housing in and around downtown that Bronin says are needed to foster downtown that acts less like a urban office park and more like a residential neighborhood.

Pandemic’s painful jolt

As with other cities, the pandemic gave Hartford a painful jolt not only setting back the city’s revitalization but exposing the reality of just how dependent the city is on office workers to support its ecosystem of restaurants, shops and other businesses.

Even before COVID-19, the city was trying to strike a better balance between downtown residents and the 9-to-5 workforce. CRDA’s low-cost loans helped add more than 3,000 new rentals in the last decade. Most new rentals were created in older, outdated office buildings and heavily concentrated in market-rate rents.

Apartment leasing demand, at least so far, has remained strong, at 90% or better in the dozens of new projects approved for CRDA financing.

The addition of more apartments turned even more urgent in pandemic, with the nature of work changed — some say, for good — as more office workers perform their jobs from home and fewer are returning to the office part-time, if at all. Tenants in downtown office towers are seeking to downsize leases, threatening their values.

Some of the office buildings may be future candidates for apartment conversions.

Bronin’s strategy of focusing on market-rate rents follows the economic axiom that more affluent renters — young professionals and empty nesters, many from outside the city — have the disposable income to spend on dining and entertainment. In turn, that will spur more development of restaurants, bars and other venues that also will attract more visitors to the city.

‘Not been a priority’

Some critics say Bronin has pushed too heavily for market-rate housing.

“The quality of housing for people who already live here, for poor people, clearly has not been a priority,” Councilman Joshua Michtom, of the Working Families Party, said. “We have not prioritized safe, accessible, healthy housing for poor people, the availability of housing for poor people.”

Michtom points to a recent city council meeting packed by tenants who had no heat in their apartments and couldn’t reach their absentee landlord. The city needs to be tougher on abusive landlords who ignore the needs of tenants for a decent space to live, Michtom said.

Bronin says he hasn’t ignored the need for affordable housing, but he is trying to strike a better balance of housing stock and spectrum of incomes. Historically, the city has concentrated poverty in certain areas of the city, he says, leading to social ills.

Recently, the city rolled out a rental licensing program that requires landlords of dwellings with 40 or more units to participate in the program. It’s the first phase of a three-year program designed to crack down on negligent landlords.

Neighborhood leaders say they understand the need to shore up the downtown with more residents. But at times, they have been frustrated by what they see as a slower pace of redevelopment in their neighborhoods.

MARG’s Yennie said she and her neighbors are particularly concerned about blighted buildings.

“We’re all never going to be happy with everything,” MARG’s Yennie said. “But the fact is, some people felt kind of left out and felt like, ‘Oh well, what’s going on? Why are we not getting the service we need?”

‘Hardest part of this job’

In the pandemic — and its aftermath — there was a spike in gun violence in the city.

An analysis of gun violence statistics shows that Hartford, like other cities in the state and across the country, saw a dramatic increase in homicides and non-fatal shootings, in both 2021 and 2022. Through November, the number of shooting victims had declined by 29% compared with the same period in 2022.

However, deaths linked to gun violence have remained high so far this year, at 27. Although that number is on a pace to be lower than the total of 39 for all of 2022, the number of homicides in 2023 is still higher than many previous years.

Bronin said the city is employing the latest technology, including ShotSpotter, to combat crime. His administration has launched social programs such as the youth services corps that help young people find steady, part-time employment.

But that isn’t a lot of comfort when a grieving family loses a loved one, Bronin said.

“The hardest part of this job, by far, is sitting with a mother or father or grandparent of somebody — especially a young person — whose life has been stolen by gun violence,” Bronin said. “Gun violence, especially fatal gun violence, is deeply traumatic for our community and for any community.”

“The pain of  any act of gun violence ripples throughout a community,” Bronin said. “And I have felt — and feel — responsibility every time we lose somebody.”

Overall, violent crime —  rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft — has been easing for a decade, down 40% to 4,476 reported crimes in 2022, compared with 7,099 in 2012. Data through the first week of December suggest violent crime in 2023 will fall below 2022.

7-year court battle

In October, the city reached a nearly $10 million settlement to end a 7-year court battle over the construction of Dunkin’ Park that spanned almost all but a few months of Bronin’s entire mayoral tenure.

Soon after taking office as mayor in 2016, Bronin fired the original developers of Dunkin’ Park, pointing to cost overruns, missed construction deadlines and incomplete work in the city-financed project.

The developers — Centerplan Construction Co. and DoNo Hartford LLC — had been hired by the previous mayoral administration. Bronin also later fired the developers from the mixed-use development around the home field of the Hartford Yard Goats.

Centerplan and DoNo sued, seeking $90 million for wrongful termination, alleging the city ordered the changes that delayed the completion of the ballpark.

A Superior Court jury in 2019 sided with the city, but the Supreme Court ordered a new trial in 2024.

After the original developers were fired, the ballpark was completed by Centerplan’s surety, which stepped in to finish the job. A new developer — Stamford-based RMS — was chosen for the mixed-used development.

When adding in $6 million in legal fees, the cost to litigate and settle comes closer to $16 million.

Bronin said he stands by his original decision, and he believes that his administration has delivered on the promise of his mayoral predecessor to not only build a ballpark but develop the land around it.

“The ballpark has been an enormous benefit to the Hartford community,” Bronin said. “It’s brought in thousands of people 70 nights a year. And it brings an infusion of energy and economic activity that’s really important. And the most important part of that promise was to develop that sea of surface parking lots.”

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