13 Jan Majority of Hartford’s Bushnell on the Park Has New Owner

HARTFORD — A New York investment firm has purchased two-thirds of the residential condominiums at Bushnell on the Park downtown, attracted by revitalization in the center of the city.
Gideon Asset Management LLC purchased 129 of the 180 units in the curved, 12-story building on Wells Street in late December. Monday, Gideon declined to disclose the purchase price, but city land records peg the transaction at about $14.3 million.

The purchase also includes 28,000 square feet of office space on two floors.

“We like downtown Hartford and the direction it is running in,” Isaac Klein, the firm’s managing partner, said.

Klein said the downtown market appears to have become a more stable live/work/play environment, particularly with the addition of the University of Connecticut’s new regional campus. The campus is expected to open in the fall of 2017.
Since the units in the Wells Street building were converted to condos in the late 1980s, the majority have been held by a single owner and rented out. The remaining 51 units are individually owned and were not part of the sale by the previous owner, Hamilton Point Investments.

The firm describes itself as a “generational” investor, meaning it holds onto buildings for the long term. Gideon does anticipate making upgrades to Bushnell on the Park but will first meet with tenants to learn what they believe is needed in the building, Klein said.

He declined to estimate how much the firm might invest in those improvements.

Gideon is an investor in another downtown Hartford building, the 20 Church St. office tower. According to its website, Gideon is in an “expansion mode” and hopes “to acquire an additional $500 million to $750 million of real estate assets” by the end of 2019.

“We currently seek to acquire commercial retail real estate in urban locations, street retail, tourist retail locations, retail complex locations, retail commercial condos and major metro market residential properties with a retail component,” its website states.

Copyright © 2015, Hartford Courant

Read the original article on the Hatford Courant site