The state legislature’s eleventh-hour decision to transfer ownership of the Hartford Regional Market to the Capital Region Development Authority is stirring up fears about the market’s future that have been festering for years under the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Tenants said they have been operating without leases and the recently-approved transfer of the dilapidated, 32-acre property from the state Department of Agriculture to CRDA is compounding their worries.
Unable to sign leases, major tenants who employ hundreds of workers have held back from investing in their businesses, some of them not being able to expand into space that has stood vacant for years.
“We’ve been asking for so many years, please, give us lease,” Frank Musto, owner of Musto Wine Grape Co., said. “We’ve got money to spend, we’ve got work to do, we’re growing. What are we doing wrong so that we can’t get a straight answer to grow our business?”
Musto said he has leased 25,000 square feet outside the market because “I was worried about getting tossed out, thrown out, whatever. You just couldn’t get a straight answer.”
Bill Driscoll, owner of Capitol Sausage & Provisions Inc., said he is being lobbied heavily by the city of New Britain to relocate his business there.
“They want us,” Driscoll said, referring to offers of tax incentives to get him to move and take his 75 employees with him. “They’re bending over backward.”
The agriculture department — which has run the regional market since the 1950s — commissioned an ambitious plan for redeveloping the regional market in 2014. The plan, which would have cost as much as $100 million, has languished amid the state’s fiscal woes.
The regional market — perhaps best-known for its flower and produce sales on weekends — also is a major hub for distributors such as Musto and Driscoll, taking advantage of nearby highway access. FreshPoint, a division of national food distributor Sysco Corp., also is a major tenant.
CRDA’s expertise in developing real estate will provide a significant opportunity for renewal at the regional market, said Jason Novak, deputy press secretary for Malloy, in a statement late Wednesday in response to a request for comment.
“While the Department of Agriculture’s plan was a valuable part of the discussion on how we could best revitalize this project, CRDA ultimately offered the best path forward to capitalize on the value of the Hartford Regional Market, at a significantly lower cost to the state, thanks to their unique investment and marketing expertise,” Novak said.
Martin M. Looney, the Senate’s top Democratic leader, said his understanding was that the transfer to CRDA “made more sense” because the quasi-state agency was far more focused on economic development than the agriculture department.
The shift of the regional market from the Department of Agriculture to the CRDA happened very late in this year’s General Assembly session. The change was made without any public hearings or open legislative debate, and instead was included as part of a last-minute amendment to a “conveyance bill” involving multiple parcels of state property being transferred to municipalities and other entities.
“This is something that was agreed to by the Malloy administration, the city of Hartford and the Hartford delegation as an economic development issue,” Looney said.
CRDA started taking a role in planning for the future of the area earlier this year when it was asked by the Malloy administration to seek proposals for a 20-acre site across from the market near a regional power plant.
That drew interest from two produce distributors looking to expand: FreshPoint, already in the regional market, and Hartford-based Sardilli Produce & Dairy Co. The competing bids prompted a discussion on how to help both companies expand in the area.
The only way that could happen was if CRDA also had control of the regional market property to form a comprehensive redevelopment plan, Michael W. Freimuth, CRDA’s executive director, said Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Freimuth sent a letter to the market’s tenants to explain — and quell fears — about the change. CRDA’s role would be in redevelopment, not operating the market, Freimuth said. Operations would remain with the agriculture department.
“The market is physically fatigued, without an agreed-upon, long-term plan and hasn’t been able to react to demands and the needs of its users,” Freimuth wrote. “CRDA’s purpose is to assess the actual real estate, its operations, its capacity for growth, its buildings and site conditions, and recommend and pursue a renewal strategy.”
The transfer of the property still needs the approval of the state’s property review board. It is uncertain when that approval will be secured.
Freimuth wrote that long-term leases would be on hold as CRDA forms a redevelopment plan, but seasonal and monthly leases could be accommodated. He noted that “current operations should continue as they are.”
Freimuth visited the market Wednesday and, in an interview outside Musto’s office, he said he hoped a plan would be developed by the first of the year.
Driscoll said the fortunes of the regional market appeared to take a sharp turn for the worse under Agriculture Commissioner Steven Reviczky and Linda Piotrowicz, who became executive director of the Connecticut Marketing Authority in 2015.
“The market just started downhill,” Driscoll said. “It was like they were on a mission to destroy the place.”
Reviczky shrugged off complaints Wednesday that his department has mismanaged the Hartford Regional Market. “I think that’s an easy excuse,” he said.
“It’s a difficult operation to run,” Reviczky said. “The infrastructure there is old, things break all the time… and it costs a lot more money and requires more human and financial resources, not less.”
Later efforts to develop new leases for vendors to fill some of the many empty spaces at the market were hampered by personnel reductions and budget cuts. “We have inadequate staff at the Connecticut Marketing Authority … to negotiate and conclude agreements,” he said.
The commissioner said he wasn’t consulted by Malloy or his staff or any legislative leader about the last-minute decision to shift responsibility for the regional market from his agency to the CRDA. “I did not have any conversations,” he said.
Reviczky said the move came as a surprise to him. “Frankly, I devoted a lot of my time and limited resources … to making that facility more vital to the city of Hartford, and to the region as a whole,” he said.
Jonathan Bronzi, a Glastonbury-based farmer who supplies vegetables to several of the vendors at the regional market, said he is taking a “cautiously optimistic” approach to the CRDA takeover of the operation.
The late-night shift of the regional market to the CRDA has triggered confusion and fear among vendors, farmers and even some lawmakers.
“If this was such a great idea, why was it done this way?” asked Don Tuller, president of the Connecticut Farm Bureau, a nonprofit representing farmers throughout the state. “It was really done last-minute, in the dark of the night.”
