VACANT CORNY T'S IN DOWNTOWN HARTFORD SAYS IT ALL
Stan SimpsonTHE HARTFORD COURANT
Now, it's five years -- and counting.
That's how long it's been since one of the more prominent Hartford commercial spots has been vacant, slumbering on the corner of Capitol Avenue and Main Street.
Each year when I want to take the pulse of investor confidence downtown, I look no further than the former Corny T's, which was once the old Spencer's Restaurant. Despite efforts by the city and the governor to turn downtown into a destination, it's befuddling to see 24,000 square feet in the heart of Hartford, beneath a thriving condominium complex and near city hall, a federal court house and an acclaimed performance arts center, dormant.
Things were starting to percolate last year. I told you about the Wharf Management Group, a start-up company that had agreed to purchase Corny T's from boxing promoter Don King for $500,000. King got hooked up with the property during the days when he promoted Mike Tyson and employed city native Rory Holloway as a Tyson co-manager.
After several rescheduled closings, the deal with King fell through. One of the Wharf group's key investors was tax professional Patrick Triumph of Bloomfield. Triumph was indicted last April on multiple counts of preparing false tax returns for clients from 1993-96. With Triumph in legal hot water, the deal with King was doused.
Wharf Management Group had a promising vision for the site. Instead of owning a business that would operate in the building, the group would secure investors to buy the building. Wharf would then serve as property managers, collecting rents from an array of potential businesses, including a restaurant, nightclub, marketplace and small business firms.
The best way to utilize a place as cavernous as this is to fill it with a bunch of distinct enterprises, each serving as its own destination spot.
"If I had the money, I'd still do it," says Angella Thompson. The 29-year-old city native and University of Hartford alum is Wharf's point person. Her role was to secure the investors, and head the management team.
Thompson said that after Triumph's legal woes, she reached out to King's people to see if the "Only in America" man himself would be interested in being an investor. He wasn't.
Meanwhile, Hartford's economic development director Harry Freeman blanches when I tell him that ultimately he should be judged not so much for what he can do to attract business to Adriaen's Landing, but whether he can secure an investor for Corny T's.
"Finding the users for it is not the problem," says Freeman, in his third year on the job. "Finding the investor willing to take a risk on it has been the challenge. Anytime you have a building that has sat vacant as long as this one has in a location that provides opportunity, it's frustrating. But just because something's frustrating doesn't mean you stop working on it."
Another challenge is that taxes and condo fees for the potential owner total a little over $100,000 a year.
The vacant Corny T's and the popular Low Country restaurant across the street anchor what some consider a gateway to Adriaen's Landing. For entrepreneurs, there has been uneven success.
After Spencer's went under, Corny T's opened in spectacular fashion in the summer of 1997.
In three months, Cornelius Thompson's business went belly-up due to poor management and cash flow problems.
A few years later The Savannah, Winnie Johnson's upscale restaurant across the street, had similar problems and closed its doors.
The latest mishap with Wharf Management can give the appearance that the corner is snakebit.
"There's a lot of skepticism that's involved in the property," says Angella Thompson, no relation to Corny. "The persons that are part of our community that should support those kinds of projects kind of shy against it because of all the businesses that have failed in the area. It's got a stigma to it that makes investors shy away and not want to help in developing that corner, which is a shame."
I've long maintained that it won't be just cranes in the air that indicate when investor confidence in Hartford is in full bloom. The real barometer is that downtown building so big it has two addresses -- 427 Main and 10 Capitol Ave.
If the "Corny T's" sign is still up, that will speak for itself.
Stan Simpson's column appears Mondays and Saturdays.