It’s a full two decades after the launch of a highly controversial plan to revive this Connecticut city’s downtown
Now, Bristol is getting closer to selling the last of the Bristol Square Mall property that it bought for $5.3 million in 2005.
The city this week announced it’s seeking developers to build either apartments, condos or a mixed residential-and-commercial building on 1.3 acres, the last part of the 17-acre site that it acquired with dreams of a vast municipal facility.
The last parcel to be developed at the former Bristol Centre Square Mall site is on the market. (Courtesy of City of Bristol)
Turning the decrepit and failing mall into a municipal centerpiece was a job that spanned the terms of six different mayors and a long series of failed redevelopment proposals, with a contingent of voters complaining all along that the city never should have gotten involved in the project.
But the property now has four of the city’s largest and most modern buildings, with new restaurants opening and — city leaders hope — more to come.
Center Square Village at 100 Main St. in Bristol on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
Carrier Construction is nearly done building 104 apartments in two sleek, mid-rise buildings along North Main Street where the north end of the mall stood and has already signed on to build another 30 on a smaller lot to the south.
Monterrey, a Mexican restaurant, and the health-focused Pure Foods this year both relocated to buildings on the property, which has taken on the name Centre Square Village. Wheeler Health and Bristol Hospital have already built substantial office and clinical buildings on the rest of the land, leaving the 1.3-acre parcel as the final space available.
“While it may be the last parcel to be developed, I actually think it is going to be the easiest since the rest of the downtown landscape has been built with success and enthusiasm,” Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said Wednesday.
“We are excited to see what the potential projects will be to complement what we designed five years ago and have watched come to life,” she said.
The city announced that through Jan. 26, 2026, it will accept development proposals for the tract. Because the site is such a key part of downtown, Bristol isn’t interested in selling it to a high bidder but instead wants to compare detailed proposals from prospective buyers.
Wheeler Health’s new community health center in downtown Bristol. (Don Stacom/The Hartford Courant)
The city is looking for multifamily or mixed-use projects for the site, and developers submitting qualified proposals will be invited to interview with city officials, economic development director Justin Malley said in an announcement.
The city’s frequently delayed downtown revitalization began in the early 2000s during the administration of Mayor Gerard Couture, who envisioned replacing the dying mall with a large municipal complex of community buildings, open space, a fieldhouse, a Boys and Girls Club and more. His administration hoped for substantial state aid from Gov. John Rowland, but scandal drove Rowland from office and the hope for tens of millions in state funding vanished.
Taxpayers turned on Couture, voting him out of office that fall. The mall was subsequently demolished and what was left behind was a vast, ugly vacant lot of broken concrete and gravel. A succession of mayors tried various consultants, marketing firms and new development schemes, but there was not solid progress until Bristol Hospital constructed a three-story, 60,000-square-foot office and medical lab complex on four acres there.
Wheeler Health built its 45,000-square-foot headquarters and treatment center several years later, and Carrier has rapidly followed with two four-story apartment buildings.
