In January 1996, Trinity College announced a comprehensive $175-million neighborhood revitalization initiative for the community surrounding its campus in the heart of Hartford. The initiative, which links neighborhood institutions in an unprecedented collaboration, has been designed to create a safe, viable, and vibrant neighborhood that is also a central hub of educational, health, family-support, and economic-development activities. Drawing on community resources and institutions already in place, the revitalization initiative creates an infrastructure for local families that encourages stable home ownership, supports neighborhood economic development, and provides educational resources for children, youth, and adults.

BUILDING COMMUNITY
We seek to renew the neighborhood from within by building a community of learning spanning pre-kindergarten, high school, and adult education and by establishing a range of programs and services aimed at increasing home ownership and economic opportunity.

We have fostered an extraordinary partnership among major health and educational institutions; the public and private sectors; city, state, and federal government; and community and neighborhood groups that share a stake in the future of this area and are committed to its revitalization. Together, we are creating the Learning Corridor, a 16-acre site that represents the central hub of the initiative and the source of its vitality. Together, we are revitalizing a formerly blighted 15-square-block area bounded by New Britain Avenue, Washington Street, Ward Street, and Zion Street. And together, we are helping to restore hope and opportunity.

In July 1997, we took a large step toward the realization of our vision when Trinity and its partners in the Southside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance (SINA)--Hartford Hospital, the Institute of Living, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and Connecticut Public Television and Radio--broke ground for the Learning Corridor. Thanks to strategic support from the Aetna Foundation, CTG Resources, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Loctite Foundation, and from the City of Hartford and the State of Connecticut, our initiative moved from a shared vision toward the concrete reality of new schools, new homes, and new jobs.

The initiative will generate over $130 million in new construction. Designed to increase owner occupancy throughout the neighborhoods, the initiative will weave housing rehabilitation, neighborhood retail businesses, streetscape improvements, job training, recreation, and family services into the fabric of the reinvigorated residential community, thus building widespread and deeply vested interest in maintaining the quality and vibrancy of the community.

We have had wonderful success securing support for the neighborhood initiative. Perhaps most significantly--because it represents national recognition of the promise of our efforts--the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded Trinity a $5.1-million grant to support the College’s plans to build College-community connections emphasizing civic responsibility and educational innovation.

These are the essential elements of a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization initiative that challenges all the old assumptions about urban renewal.

Education

Investing in families

Beyond the Learning Corridor

Trinity, its neighbors, and Hartford

News releases

Kellogg Project

Recent photos of Learning Corridor