Form-based code adopted to redevelop business campus

Scenario for redevelopment of the Hartford's Simsbury campus. Gateway Planning Group.

The Hartford, a Fortune 500 insurance and investment firm based in Hartford, Connecticut, is using form-based coding to spur redevelopment of its 173-acre former business campus. 

The Town of Simsbury, in Hartford County, recently adopted a form-based code for the site. The Hartford wants to sell the prime real estate for redevelopment. The firm worked with the town on the code, crafted by Gateway Planning Group of Dallas, Texas. 

“This is breaking new ground in terms of using a design process to calibrate a form-based code so that the business interest of the property owner and the public’s interests are brought together,’’ Scott Polikov, principal of Gateway Planning Group, told the Hartford Business Journal.

“It’s a unique way of doing it and an extremely good model,’’ Joel Russell, executive director of the Form-Based Codes Institute based in Chicago, told the Journal.

Simsbury, a town with 23,511 people, was entirely rural prior to the second half of the 20th Century. Development consists mostly of low-density subdivisions­—the town’s Walk Score is 15, defined as “almost all errands require a car.” Services are strung out along a state highway, Route 202, Hopmeadow Street—which is where The Hartford’s former office campus is located.

On 40 acres of the site is The Hartford’s four-story, 641,000 square foot building, now vacant.

The code sets the stage for walkable urban redevelopment of the site, which  would create the first urban center in Simsbury.

The Journal reports that $175,000 was spent to design and code the site, including a charrette with full public input and market research. The town spent $30,000 and the rest was provided by The Hartford. The plan and the code are designed to increase the value of the property and, ultimately, tax revenues to the town when it is redeveloped.

“With input from key stakeholders and the public, several short and long term development scenarios were derived, including a whole health village anchored by healthcare and continuing care retirement facilities, a farm-to-table eco-village anchored by community agriculture, bioscience, and related manufacturing facilities, and a university or educational institution anchored mixed-use village,” according to the code summary.

“In creating a vibrant vision for redevelopment and the corresponding zoning tool … the Town is committed to supporting the long-term evolution of a single-use campus site into a pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use development environment that can adapt over time to shifting demands without rezoning, while allowing for reuse of the existing building and campus for a wide variety of development opportunities,” the report says.

Note: This article appears in the Ocober-November 2014 print issue of Better Cities & Towns.