It might seem that a city that spent six months aching for an end to a scandal that ultimately forced Gov. John G. Rowland from office would be relieved to return to its sedate self.
Surely as the new governor, M.Jodi Rell, moves so conspicuously to remarket the Capitol as a place where the word ethics is not always followed by the word violation, a certain civic comfort would come with getting back to bland.
Yet while politicians may be striving to be anything but provocative, Hartford itself, rather than reclaiming its enduring anonymity, is spreading its frayed wings. Bolstered by downtown construction and trendy new restaurants sprinkled on a handful of its historic streets, Hartford is confronting the identity crisis that has defined it for decades even as other New England capitals like Boston and Providence, R.I., have remade themselves.
Long caught between its role as insurance capital and its reality as a forerunner of the urban middle-class diaspora and the poverty it leaves behind, Hartford now is proclaiming itself at the brink of transformation -- to becoming hip.
Make that H.I.P., actually, the acronym for Hartford Image Project, the marketing campaign the city began three years ago but that now, as apartment buildings and a large convention center and hotel are rising downtown, boosters hope will play nationwide.
"Enough progress has now been made that the renaissance, the turnaround, or whatever you'd like to call it, is concrete enough to take the story nationally," said Michael Kintner, the project coordinator for H.I.P., which is responsible for the slogan, "Hartford, New England's Rising Star," that appears on billboards, street banners and in advertisements.
Renaissance, of course, is a word that rolls readily off the lips of people who sell struggling cities for a living, and even Mr. Kintner acknowledges there is not yet consensus that Hartford's star is in fact ascending. But believing counts for something, and Mr. Kintner's campaign, a collective venture of more than a dozen groups, has hired a New York public relations firm, Ruder Finn, to lure writers and editors to the city with the goal of changing perceptions.
There is much work to do. The city, which has a population of 124,000, suffers from a high rate of poverty, a struggling public school system and a violent-crime rate that increased last year even as some neighborhoods improved.
While Ruder Finn begins to study the city and how to sell it to the rest of America, Mr. Kintner is tweaking the local pitch. This summer, relying on what he calls a shoestring budget, he has placed advertisements on billboards near downtown that ask a question: "When's the last time you did it in Hartford? That long?"
Mr. Kintner concedes the double entendre of his advertisement but says he wants to generate more than middle-school giggles. He says the mission is to motivate a specific demographic -- people 35 and younger -- to go to Hartford to do whatever they typically might do elsewhere.
"We're challenging them: Let us take a shot at your perception," he said. "Whether it's that they have none, which is much of the time, or it's that the town empties out at 5."
While Mr. Kintner works on the city's image, Mayor Eddie A. Perez faces the more fundamental problems. He has fought to keep property taxes under control, and he attended the Democratic National Convention in Boston as both a partisan politician and a Hartford ambassador.
"It's a hard sell," he said on July 29 while attending a lunch for the Connecticut delegation. "I wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't a hard sell."
But Mr. Perez said he wants to make connections with people who may be players in Washington, so he can "pick up the phone and call the secretary of housing" when his city needs help.
He said he tells everyone he can that Hartford is a "critical" link between Boston and New York.
Hartford can point to evidence of progress, from apartment buildings under construction near Bushnell Park to Adriaen's Landing, the $800 million convention center overlooking Interstate 91 and the Connecticut River, a legacy of Mr. Rowland's that is scheduled to be completed next year. A retail development, called Front Street, is planned across from the convention center, though its construction has been delayed by disputes over contract details.
On a recent Thursday evening at Bin 228, a downtown wine and panini bar that opened last year, a young professional foursome sat at a back corner table.
Zillah Matare, 30, who moved from Atlanta three years ago to work in human resources for United Technologies Corporation, said she had been pleasantly surprised by the city's diversity and new construction downtown. She and her husband bought a house in the Charter Oak neighborhood of the city.
Part of Ms. Matare's job includes traveling the country to recruit for the corporation, and she conceded that she often works against negative impressions of Hartford that she hears from job candidates.
"Two things," she said, "Boring and cold."
But Ms. Matare, whose work has involved her with one of the city's economic development groups, MetroHartford Alliance, said she had refined her response to skeptical prospective employees.
"I come back with the opportunity to change it," she said, meaning the identity of the city, if not its climate.
"One of the pitches I use is, 'Hartford is like Providence was 5 or 10 years ago,"' she said.
Mr. Kintner, too, pushes the long view. He says his group's studies show that more visitors are coming downtown and leaving with positive impressions.
Think less about what Hartford is in 2004, he suggested, than what it will be like living here in, say, 2021.
"It really takes 20 years to turn around a city," he said. "What year are we in? Three."
Hartford Journal; The New York Times
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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