With a plan to buy the former Crowne Plaza hotel property, a New York company is looking to get the long-stalled redevelopment on track by demolishing the decaying building and putting up more than 250 apartments.
Alpine Residential is looking to buy the Cromwell project from Lexington Partners, a well-known Hartford developer, and redesign several elements of Lexington’s original apartment proposal.
Alpine plans slightly fewer apartments and a much higher mix of two-bedroom units than Lexington had proposed, and will do away with a planned line of townhouses while cutting new retail space by more than half.
The hotel and banquet facility, once a central Connecticut landmark popular for small conventions, weddings and class reunions, has been deteriorating since January 2020 when its owners abruptly shut it down. The business had been in decline for years, first with a rebranding to Radisson and then a final change to Red Lion not long before it closed.
As recently as last winter, Lexington had intended to raze the ruined 260,000-square-foot building this year. The current plan is for Alpine to start the demolition in the first quarter 2026.
“All the buildings that are there, the parking garage and the hotel, are coming down. Their plan is to move forward with the project (in the) next construction season,” Town Manager Anthony Salvatore told the town council recently. “The (new) site plan is a lot better than what was initially proposed.”
Once the site at 100 Berlin Road is cleared, Alpine is looking to build 267 apartments in a pair of five-story buildings. Each building would be 112,000 to 120,000 square feet, according to Alpine’s description for the Planning and Zoning Commission.
“There is an approximately 12,000-square-foot courtyard with pool between the two residential buildings. This area is lined with an associated 2,200-square-foot stand-alone amenity building that is intended to be the central arrival point for visitors and future residents,” Alpine wrote in an application to amend the zoning permit originally granted to Lexington Partners.
Lexington had planned 260 apartments and 20 townhomes. It envisioned 18% of the units as studios, 50% as one-bedroom models, 23% as two-bedroom units and 4% as three-bedroom models.
Alpine’s proposal reduces the total number of residential units by axing all 20 townhomes. But it adds seven apartments and breaks them up differently: 10% would be studios, 45% would be one-bedrooms, 40% would be two-bedroom models and 6% would have three bedrooms.
Lexington had originally proposed 30,000 square feet of commercial space, but Apline’s plan includes a single 13,000-square-foot building for that purpose.
Lexington proposed its $100 million plan in 2022, and the revised residential plan reflects how the market has been changing since. Like many mixed-use developments, the Cromwell project was initially proposed with more retail than developers want in 2025.
Apline is also proposing to demolish all of the two-story parking garage on the site. Lexington had envisioned retaining part of that structure.
Alpine advertises that it owns 72 multifamily housing projects nationally with an estimated value of $3.6 billion. In Connecticut it lists The Hazel, a seven-story mixed-use building in Stamford’s South End.
“The project consists of 183 affordable and market-rate residential units, a two-story covered parking garage, an upper-level outdoor swimming pool and barbeque terrace, 7,400 square feet of amenity spaces, and approximately 2,500 square feet of retail space on the first floor,” the company states.