Startups and entrepreneurs wanted: An established program in New Britain is offering loans and lease rebates for fledgling businesses in the city’s downtown. More than $1 million is available as part of the city’s tax increment financing (TIF) program, with few applicants for the money so far, said Mayor Erin Stewart.
“New Britain has been working for years to try to get our downtown back to what it once was a hub of mom-and-pop shops that really is a destination,” Stewart said. “The TIF program allows an opportunity that business owners haven’t had before to access capital in order to make it happen.”
Image
Brian Zelman
Krohn, of New Britain’s Jasko Development, and Zelman, of West Hartford’s Zelman Real Estate, said in a recent interview that they’ve named the project The Residences at Wash Brook, after one of several nearby brooks at the 20-acre site located midway between Routes 178 and 218.
While the two partners have worked together in the past, including on a recently completed Jolley Drive medical building, Wash Brook is their first multifamily collaboration.
Fresh project renderings show a two-story atrium with a mezzanine just inside the entrance to the four-story building.
“It’s not a massive building, it has kind of a boutique hotel feel,” said Krohn, who has been one of New Britain’s more active developers in recent years.
New Britain developer Avner Krohn plans to raze and rebuild two prominently located but vacant buildings along the city’s Main Street corridor.
Krohn, principal of Jasko Development, last week secured a tax assessment modification agreement from the New Britain Common Council for the two connected buildings at 267 and 277 Main St. one of which housed the former Burritt Interfinancial Bancorporation that was shut down by bank regulators in the early 1990s.
Krohn envisions razing both properties and building an 83,000-square-foot, five-story building that would contain approximately 90 apartment units and 6,000-square-feet of ground-floor retail space.
In an interview Tuesday, Krohn said planning is still in the early stages, but estimated that the project would represent an investment north of $13 million.