The State does have revitalization plans for the Hartford Regional Market (which is part of the
Department of Agriculture); in my brief skimming, it seems like despite FreshPoint/Sysco being the biggest buyer situated there, sounds like the small-to-medium sized buyers and sellers aren't too happy with their business practices or the lowball prices they give... FreshPoint/Sysco isn't going anywhere either, they have just signed a 100 year lease for their property there as of 2000. At the end they have a bulleted list entitled "Key findings from tenant interviews", which contains one thing directly pertaining to rail access: under the location section, one entry notes "
Rail access – some want to use as their volume increases". Besides from that, the report's summary itself includes "
Rail freight expansion with more storage volume" as one of the potential opportunities for expansion.
Seems like the HRM really was just a victim of the fiscal crisis the State has been in in the last couple of decades; it's not a particularly sexy or noticed item, nor absolutely critical or hard to cut funds from, so it's sadly not much of a surprise it got neglected... probably could say the same about the whole DOAG, honestly. Same thing that plagues the railroads, deferred maintenance (and the related inability to finance upgrades). What really summed it up for me was in the "General" section of that tenant interview section I brought up before:
- Optimism, interest in expanding (doubling), including more food processing
- Current facilities don’t meet needs (break cold chain, don’t meet food safety requirements), act as a drag on business
- Restaurant Depot has made a big negative impact on HRM, took away dock business
- Need to move if something not done here soon
- Some stated would buy more from CT farmers if they were GAP certified, had higher quality and more consistent products
(Apparently, Restaurant Depot is a fully private place, they opened on the northside of Hartford right near I-91; they have more modern facilities, and offer a lot of nice services to small-to-medium sized restaurants and grocers, I imagine particularly to try and sap them from places like HRM... and it definitely sounds like it worked.)
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