Hartford Does Soul-Searching as East Slump Hits Downtown : Economy: Setbacks in the nation’s insurance capital include the loss of a century-old department store and two large hotels.

A decade of noisy construction in downtown Hartford has given way to eerie silence.

In one five-day period, Hartford ranked near the bottom of a national survey of economic growth in urban areas, a once-popular restaurant across the street from City Hall unexpectedly shut down and, in an emotional blow to the entire downtown, Sage-Allen & Co. announced plans to close its 101-year-old department store on Main Street.

“I was devastated,” Mayor Carrie Saxon Perry said of the Sage-Allen closing. “I said, ‘Wow!’ . . . It’s the end of an era.”

There have been other setbacks. Two of Hartford’s largest downtown hotels closed, taking 40% of the city’s hotel rooms with them. And West Hartford-based Colonial Realty Co., which owns several of the city’s biggest office towers, was forced into bankruptcy.

At one point, things got so bad that a group of merchants held a press conference downtown to announce that, contrary to rumors, they were staying open.

Business owners and city officials can take some comfort in knowing that other large cities in Connecticut--and across New England--are experiencing similar downturns in construction and retail activity.

But in Hartford, where civic groups have struggled for years to coax people into a central business district dominated by insurance giants like Aetna Life & Casualty and The Travelers, the economic slump has brought on a bout of civic soul-searching.

“Right now, we have lost the soul of the city,” said Brad Davis, a radio talk show host who has worked in the city for three decades.

“The only thing that’s going to save the city is to bring back its soul,” he said. “People have got to be shown that we have an identity. We’re not Boston and we’re not New York. But we’ve got our own identity.”

Hartford, a city of 130,000 and the hub of a metropolitan area of 750,000 people, faces the same problems as many other U.S. cities--the flight of whites and the middle class to the suburbs, the perception of high crime, parking and transportation.

Efforts to revive downtown have met with some success. Union Place, a glitzy corridor of nightclubs and restaurants near the city’s renovated railroad station, is packed with young people several nights a week.

A new retail row has sprouted on Pratt Street, an intimate side street in the center of the city.

And several civic groups are dedicated to breathing new life into downtown. “When things get a little tougher, you have to pull together,” said Tana Parseliti, whose family has run Frank’s restaurant in the heart of downtown for 46 years.

Still, on many nights, downtown restaurants scramble for business after office workers desert the area. Few people live in the city’s center. The district’s only hardware store closed recently, and there has not been a movie theater downtown in years.

The corporations that dominate Hartford’s downtown exist almost as self-contained communities, complete with their own cafeterias, health clubs and coffee shops, and connected by skywalks.

“A person can come in off the highway, go into one of these corporations and never come out until they leave town,” Perry said.

“We need a mixed city. We don’t just need businesses and the poor. And that’s a national struggle for cities. It’s not just a Hartford struggle.”

Buoyed by the growth of its large corporations, Hartford, the state’s capital, boomed in the 1980s. High-rises sprouted--and sprouted; a developer announced plans to build the tallest building in New England, a skyscraper stretching 888 feet, 8 inches.

But when the region’s economy slumped, downtown office vacancy rates soared and the building stopped, leaving the city pockmarked by vacant lots.

After a protracted struggle against conservationists, developers this spring destroyed the city’s first skyscraper, the 77-year-old Hartford Aetna building, to make room for a 45-story bank tower.

But construction of the new tower has been delayed, and the site now is marked by a giant crater, idle construction equipment and several boarded-up storefronts.

At the other end of Asylum Street, the glass-and-steel Parkview Hilton that symbolized the new look of Hartford in the 1950s has been shut since New Year’s Eve. Unable to find a buyer, the hotel’s owners scheduled an auction in early June, but then decided to raze the building to make room for what they hope will be an office tower.

Hanging over the city’s economic uncertainty are fears that United Technologies Corp. may move its corporate headquarters from Hartford. The defense giant has announced plans to relocate, probably within the city, but has not disclosed a final decision.

Shortly after Sage-Allen announced that it would close its downtown store, 70-year-old Minnie Wright made a decision of her own. The store’s closing would change her shopping habits, she said. After shopping at the downtown store for five decades, she now would take the bus to a West Hartford mall to shop at the Sage-Allen there.

“All the stores are going out there,” she said. “Who’s coming in here?”

She shook her head as she reminisced about downtown when it bustled with department stores, cafeterias and five-and-dimes.

“It looks like it’s on the way out,” she said. “Completely out.”