Local development firm ByCarrier Inc. is proposing to build dozens of apartments plus retail space on a long-empty downtown Bristol parcel.

The project would rise on a 4.39-acre section of city-owned land along North Main Street that’s part of the Centre Square development site.

The 17-acre Centre Square site has so far attracted only one tenant so far, Bristol Hospital, which built a large ambulatory care center in one corner of the site. The site was originally cleared following a devastating 1955 flood and played host to an unsuccessful mall from the 1960s until it was demolished by the city in 2007.

“I strongly believe the success of downtown is going to be built upon the trusted names of community businesses and organizations that our residents already know – the Bristol Health complex, the Carrier Family, Wesley Cyr and Oliver Wilson … who just finished another apartment build on South Street, and another entity soon to be named,” Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said in an email to The Commercial Record.

ByCarrier, a 50-year-old homebuilder and property manager, has inked a letter of intent to develop 90 market-rate apartments above 12,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and office space in three buildings fronting on North Main Street on parcels 5-8 of the Centre Square area. The next step in the process, city economic development director Justin Malley said, would be for Carrier to submit a formal site plan for review.

The ByCarrier proposal is not the only proposal underway in downtown Bristol. A 12-unit apartment building with ground-floor commercial space from local developers Wesley Cyr and Oliver Wilson is expected to break ground this summer, Zoppo-Sassu said.

The project will be ByCarrier’s second multifamily endeavor in downtown Bristol.