Manchester, Connecticut is breathing life back into the Broad Street Parkade site. After years of delays, legal hurdles, and restrictive covenants, the vision for mixed-use redevelopment is “full steam ahead.” Anthony Properties (a Texas-based firm) has agreed with the town (agreement signed in 2024) to build here. What stood at 300 units has now slimmed to 232 units, but the momentum is real—two lenders have expressed interest in financing, and the developer aims to file the site plan by September 22. If all goes well, approvals will come from the Planning & Zoning Commission in November. Construction is tentatively set for Spring 2026. Some background: The Parkade has been a stalled promise for decades—it’s a blighted area the town cleared out by 2012 but which never quite got off the ground. In 2022, Manchester settled a lawsuit with a previous developer for $2 million, which cleared one obstacle. Removal of a troublesome parcel, 296 Broad St., plus restrictive covenants, trimmed down the scale of the plan. But scale isn’t the only factor—lessons from similar projects (in Iowa, for example) have shaped the layout, and the developer has made tweaks to the plan to improve viability. Why this matters: Mixed-use housing in previously underutilized downtown zones is a classic test of whether towns can reimagine their core. This isn’t low-density suburban spread. It’s an attempt to bring density, housing, and perhaps commerce back into a center that’s been underutilized. If Manchester can pull this off, it may set precedent for other mid-sized towns that once banked on car-oriented parking decks but now face housing pressures. Existing zoning, financing costs, project scale, and community acceptance are all in flux. When plans shrink, so does impact (in terms of housing supply, affordability, walkability). The redesign from 300 to 232 units is a reminder that what’s feasible is often constrained by costs, covenants, and market realities. Will the site plan hit the September 22 deadline? What will the financing terms look like? How much of the housing will be affordable, or mixed income? And once built, will the development integrate with the rest of the downtown—sidewalks, transit, shops—or simply become housing blocks? If these pieces align, Manchester’s Parkade could become a model case: turning blight + parking into dense, usable, mixed-income housing in a small city context.

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