In a shoebox room there, Steven Fernandez, a rehabbed crack dealer, is writing opinion pieces about prison reform. Charlotte Briggs, limping from diabetes, is saving disability money to buy a townhouse. And Ron Poole, a comedian from Florida, is promoting his stand-up routine.

For reasons as different as they are, the three all rent rooms in the renovated Times Square Hotel, a historic spot once famous as a flophouse, a last stop between poverty and the streets. Though still a rooming house, it is an affordable haven for a now eclectic crowd: the formerly homeless, the mentally ill and the working poor, which in New York City includes actors, artists and musicians.

Now called The Times Square, the building is the largest national experiment in "supportive housing," a concept that allows homeless people and those at-risk to live independently - in a building that offers on-site counseling, job training and a medical staff.

But can the concept work in downtown Hartford, the heart of a small city struggling to revitalize itself, and banking on upscale housing to bring new life to its center?

Rosanne Haggerty thinks so. The West Hartford native behind The Times Square's revival is importing the same plan to the nucleus of Connecticut's capital city - in a prime piece of real estate by Bushnell Park.

She has plans for a 120-room facility at 410 Asylum St., a historic and long-vacant six-story building that offers sweeping views of the Capitol and is within walking distance from a hub of bars and restaurants.

City officials are not pleased. They say Haggerty's plan is incongruous with the master plan for downtown's rebirth and the hundreds of millions in state and private dollars being sunk into housing there. Her building is an architecturally noteworthy place, an address identified in the master plan as ideal for more apartments and condos.

Simply put, said Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez, Haggerty is putting a great idea in an inappropriate place.

"It's a key location, a premier location," said Matt Hennessy, Perez's chief of staff. "And I think it raises a legitimate question, which is: Is the flagship of your downtown revitalization going to be supportive housing?"

"What does it say about the city?" Hennessy said.

The plan to build supportive housing at 410 Asylum is less than a month old, decided after the Stamford couple who owned the building donated it to Haggerty's nonprofit housing group, Common Ground Community.

The couple, Milton and Betty Hollander, had hoped to raze the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and build a parking lot in its place. But city leaders fought that plan, and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a lawsuit against the couple. A trial was scheduled for November.

Out of spite, charity or futility (the Hollanders won't say), they gave away the building, ignoring offers from at least two developers who wanted to buy the property and build apartments.

Now the city is wrestling over 410 Asylum again.

Perez, eager to expand the city tax base, is opposed to any nonprofit Common Ground plan there. He said the city could offer the group alternate sites.

The mayor wields some financial influence. The supportive housing project would rely heavily on financing from low-income and historic preservation tax credits. In a competitive process in which local government support is critical to getting those credits, Perez said he is not inclined to recommend the project.

"This doesn't jump up to the head of the list," Perez said.

For her part, Haggerty said she is just another developer in the mix with her own niche client base. Hers is a cost-efficient way for treating homelessness, she said. Done right, the residents in her refurbished buildings live inconspicuously, receiving support from social service providers inside, and working in a variety of businesses, such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream, that she lures as tenants for the ground floor.

"It's not an institution. It's just an apartment building," she said.

And it fits with the downtown plan for Hartford, she said. She cites the city's gripes in her defense.

"One of the real needs the city has and one of the things that we're excited about is to get residents in the downtown," she said. "Our point of view is that we're getting important buildings that are dark and lifeless, getting them restored, getting an active retail presence there, getting 24-hour security. How can that be bad?"

But New York is far bigger than Hartford, critics say. It is a place where anything can be anonymous. The Times Square, for example, is a tan brick building, surrounded by things more interesting than itself: a strip of sex shops to its west, the New York Times next door and, a block away, the bling-bling of Times Square in all its neon.

Downtown Hartford is a cozier place, where every new investment is seen as a milestone, where Gov. John G. Rowland sees fit to attend the opening of a parking garage.

"We've got a certain momentum here and we don't want to set that back," said Martin J. Kenny, the developer of Trumbull Centre, 100 new apartments near Bushnell Park.

His is one of two ambitious rental housing plans taking shape downtown after decades when there were none. Kenny sent a letter to the Hollanders a few weeks ago expressing interest in 410 Asylum, not far from his current project. He said he got no response.

In New York City, Haggerty has a track record of turning over idle, if not dangerous, places. She also has a history of opposition in each neighborhood she approaches.

Her group acquired the Times Square Hotel from bankruptcy and squalor in 1991, just around the time New York City was looking into exorcising the neighborhood of its image as a haven for pornography and drug use.

Carl Weisbrod, then head of New York City's economic development commission, initially opposed her housing plan. Times Square did not need that kind of project, he thought. He favored a budget hotel and told the mayor so.

But Weisbrod's view has changed completely. He said the project helped spur development, not deter it. Ben & Jerry's donated an ice cream franchise to Common Ground and put it on the ground floor of The Times Square, at 43rd Street and 8th Avenue. It was the first upscale retail on that dingy block in years and was followed by a Starbucks coffee shop next door.

"There are relatively few times where I would say I was absolutely, 100 percent wrong," Weisbrod said. "But I was."

Haggerty, 43, got The Times Square a historic designation and raised money to restore its past. She fixed the lobby with its marble walls, high ceilings and winding staircases, and made space for a variety of social services along the brass balcony. She refurbished 652 rooms and reserved half for the mentally ill and homeless and half for the working poor, who may not need the social services but can take advantage of them if they do.

Haggerty considers it a success each time passersby peer into the lobby, assume it's a hotel and stop in to ask about rates.

For those living there, rent is 30 percent of their income or of whatever source of subsidy they receive. In The Times Square, the upper income limit is $25,000 for a single individual; a few units are set aside for those making between $25,000 and $30,000. In Hartford, the income limit would be about $28,000, Haggerty said.

A tour of an average room in The Times Square takes no longer than a swivel of the head. They are 250- to 400-square-foot rooms, most with private baths. They come with a single bed, a dresser, a table and chairs, a mini-fridge and a two-burner hot plate.

The rooms may be small but the public gathering areas are large. The Times Square and its cousin, The Prince George, on 28th Street, have landscaped rooftop decks, rehearsal rooms, computer rooms and multipurpose gathering rooms - all places where classes such as yoga and ceramics are taught.

And the lobby of The Times Square, filled with artwork and sofas, is still a place of society - a very large cross-section of it. Elderly and disabled recline there as harried people lugging musical instruments or dressed in workout gear come and go.

Sometimes it's hard to tell who's who.

Steven Fernandez, 51, smartly dressed in his olive blazer and tie, a handkerchief in his jacket, often makes rounds of the lobby with a pleasant smile, a firm handshake and plenty of life to talk about.

He served over a year in prison for drug-dealing and was released early into a transitional shelter.

He plans to leave The Times Square one day - but not yet. The rent is cheap enough to finance his budding interest in lobbying and advocacy. He went to Albany this year to talk about funding for homeless programs and has written commentaries for the building's newsletter on the need for better mental health care for prison inmates.

"Everything here is geared toward getting your life together," he said. "It helped me rearrange my life."

The Times Square was where Charlotte Briggs, who lost five toes to diabetes and left a job in a department store, learned from social workers that she could receive disability payments and food stamps. She is 58.

But for every Briggs or Fernandez starting over, there are the Ron Pooles starting out.

A part-time comic in New York, Poole, 31, tired of doubling and tripling up with friends in tiny Manhattan-rate apartments. He's got a steady gig as crowd-warmer for Chef Emeril Lagasse's show on the Food Network and appears regularly at a midtown comedy club.

Now he also has a studio apartment in midtown - that he can afford.

"It's an old hotel. Love that," he said. "Twenty-four-hour security? Love that. Elevator? Love that. Gym in the basement? Love that."

A discussion of this story with Courant Staff Writer Oshrat Carmiel is scheduled to be shown on New England Cable News each half-hour Monday, Oct 13, 2003 between 9 a.m. and noon.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant