What You’ll Find
A city of roughly 49,000 people, Middletown hugs the west bank of the Connecticut River about 16 miles south of Hartford. Once a bustling port center, it covers some 41 square miles of Middlesex County, making it one of the state’s largest municipalities by land area.
The 316-acre campus of Wesleyan University, a liberal arts institution, melds into the downtown area, its borders not easily distinguishable from city streets. Students and faculty help support the many restaurants and shops along Main Street, a wide boulevard lined with historic buildings. Fast food chains and big-box stores can be found on Route 66, the east-west route through the city.
The housing stock is relatively old — most of it built between the 1950s and the 1980s — and includes multifamily buildings, apartments and condominiums, said Jonathan Zuromski, the owner of JZ Realtors. Development is dense close to the center of the city, but spreads out near the borders of the surrounding towns.
Harbor Park is on the riverfront, with a boardwalk and a new restaurant in the works. But most of the frontage along that deep bend in the river is cut off from the city by Route 9. An ambitious, 10-plus-year plan to “reclaim” some 200 acres of the riverfront that originally fueled Middletown’s rise envisions a pedestrian bridge over the highway to reach several new districts with trails, public art, a recreation center, a winter skating rink and housing, said Ben Florsheim, the city’s mayor.
“The hope is that it will become an economic driver and a public recreation destination,” said Mr. Florsheim, whose administration is awaiting final approval of a $12 million state grant to begin remediation and site prep.
Among the city’s largest employers are Pratt & Whitney, the jet-engine manufacturer, Middlesex Health and Connecticut Valley Hospital, a public hospital for people with mental illness, which has a sprawling, hilltop campus overlooking the river.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
