Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

Capitol West, the notorious eyesore at the Asylum Street exit off I-84 west in Hartford, is coming down, after years of steady decay and finally, an eminent domain fight by the city.

On Wednesday, city officials and executives from The Hartford, which donated $2 million to buy and knock down the office building, will launch the demolition with a ceremony marking the event. No actual demolition will take place, other than the removal of the Capitol West name from above the main entrance.

In the next two weeks or so, asbestos will be removed. Then, the heavy demolition will get underway.

I started writing about Capitol West more than a decade ago and have followed it through plans by two owners. Ten years ago, Morgan Reed Group and its owner Robert Danial, envisioned a technology center in the 180,000-square-foot building.

It was Morgan Reed�s idea to carve out floor-to-ceiling windows on the corner of Capitol West closest to the highway exit, to show prospective tenants a killer view of downtown Hartford. The idea didn�t work and contributed to building�s deterioration.

The most recent owner, Joshua Guttman, floated plans for housing, both condominiums and apartments, that never got serious.

Capitol West didn�t start out being reviled or even as office space. It was first a car dealership in the late 1940s � minus the upper stories � that won praise for its design. In 2001, I took a look back at the property�s storied, if not a bit checkered past:

In 1947, the triangular-shaped parcel at 1 Myrtle St. was developed as a two-story showroom and service center with rooftop parking for Sloate Chevrolet, a major dealership.

The design, praised as �architecturally unique� because it conformed to a terrain of solid rock, made it possible to enter any one of the three levels directly from one of the bordering streets � Myrtle, Church or Spring.

The first-floor showroom featured a 43-foot mural of the history of transportation, executed under the direction of the Yale Institute of Fine Arts.

Do you know what happened to the mural?

City officials praised the rooftop parking as an �object lesson� in solving the parking problems that plagued Hartford even in the 1940s.

The Courant reported Mayor Coleman�s remarks at the dealership�s grand opening: �. . . we are deeply grateful whenever means are discovered to increase the business of the merchants and at the same time relieve our traffic problem.�

The area was later christened �Sloate Square,� the last of three locations where Harry M. Sloate operated car dealerships in Hartford.

Sloate went out of business in 1955 after 22 years. There were plans to incorporate the dealership property into a massive manufacturing and warehouse complex. The complex, never built, would have occupied land between Myrtle Street and Union Station, where I-84 was eventually constructed.

From the start, it was envisioned that additional stories would be added to the top of the dealership, either for parking or offices. But through the 1950s and 1960s, the former dealership remained undeveloped, although it was converted for manufacturing. One longtime tenant was Pratt & Whitney Aircraft.

In 1966, local developer and builder Merritt Baldwin purchased the property from Sloate and, in 1974, added five more stories to create what became known as Capitol West, named for its location west of the state�s seat of government.

Two years later, according to city land and assessor records, Baldwin lost the building by foreclosure to the bank that had financed the expansion.

Between 1979 and 1986, Capitol West came under the control of well known Chicago real estate mogul Samuel Zell. (Zell would later lead the leveraged buyout of Tribune Co., the parent of The Courant and FoxCT.) Under Zell, Aetna Life & Casualty Co and the old Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. were major tenants.

The building once again changed hands in 1986, with Capitol West Associates listed in city records as the owner. Connecticut Mutual, the last tenant, moved out in 1994, leaving the building vacant.

The city foreclosed on the property later that year, amid a prolonged commercial real estate recession.

Morgan Reed purchased the property in 1998 for $575,000 and sold it to Guttman in 2004 for $1 million in cash.

In November, the city agreed to buy Capitol West for $1.7 million, capping off months of sometimes contentious negotiations with Guttman. Seven months earlier, the city had voted to take the property by eminent domain, part of redevelopment efforts to remove eyesores at key gateways to the city.

At one point Guttman offered to sell for $2 million, but the city said it wouldn�t pay more than $1 million. The courts decided on the final price.

This afternoon, I was shooting photos of Capitol West and a cab driver pulled over.

�Is it coming down?� the driver asked, �For good?�

I nodded.

He gave a thumbs up and drove off.

http://courantblogs.com/ct-real-estate/hartfords-capitol-west-a-storied-checkered-past/