This West Hartford native runs an organization called Common Ground in New York that promotes "supportive housing." The owners of the Capitol Building, a group headed by Stamford industrialist Betty Ruth Hollander, last week gave the structure to Common Ground.

The owners once sought to demolish the building to provide parking for an adjacent building, but preservationists and public officials objected. The ensuing legal impasse could now be resolved with the gift of the building to Ms. Haggerty.

Mayor Eddie Perez reportedly doesn't support Common Ground's acquisition, fearing it will depress property values and inhibit the development of market-rate housing.

The mayor's concerns are understandable. It's unfortunate but true that social service entities, especially ones that aren't tightly run, can be a drag on neighborhood prosperity. A building across from the park and the Capitol would be inappropriate for a homeless shelter.

But that's not what Common Ground does.

The group has restored several of Manhattan's decaying old hotels and turned them into permanent residences, not temporary shelters.

Typically, half the tenants in Haggerty buildings are working people who simply need a place to live. The other half are people, carefully screened, who can function in the workforce with the help of mental health or addiction services, which are provided in the building. The buildings also contain stores such as Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, small grocery shops and other places where residents can get jobs.

Ms. Haggerty's completed projects win praise from business people in Manhattan. Her transformation of the drug-ridden Times Square Hotel was a key to the renewal of Times Square, said Ellen Goldstein of the Times Square Business Improvement District. Ms. Goldstein said the opening of a Westin Hotel across the street suggests it hasn't inhibited development.

The Hollander group was no friend of Hartford's, but Ms. Haggerty is likely to be. She wants to save one of downtown's few surviving Neoclassical Revival buildings.

Also, Common Ground will provide something that healthy cities have always had, and that's downtown housing for blue-collar workers.

Ms. Haggerty, whose work has twice been featured on "60 Minutes," won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" two years ago because she has been successful at what she does. There's no reason to think she can't work the same magic in Hartford.