Architecture firm Cooper Robertson will propose a set of new zoning bylaws for Middletown’s 220-acre riverfront including multifamily mixed-use housing and more than 50 acres of open space and parklands. Image courtesy of Cooper Robertson

A score or more of real estate development projects across Connecticut scored funding from the State Bond Commission Thursday when the entity voted to authorize $500 million in borrowing for a range of infrastructure and economic development efforts.

Two of the bigger awards went to the city of Middletown for its “Return to the Riverbend” project and a nonprofit New Haven developer trying to transform a decaying strip mall in the heart of the city’s Black community into affordable housing and arts space.

Middletown hopes to transform over 220 acres along the Connecticut River near its downtown into 50 acres of parks and significant amounts of new development. A master plan for the project was completed earlier this year. Voters OK’d $55 million in bonding in 2020 that includes a $5 million earmark for purchase and clean-up of a former container manufacturing plant on River Road and three residential properties on Eastern Drive. Thursday, the State Bond Commission agreed to send $12 million for the project’s first phase.

New Haven’s ConnCORP received a $10 million contribution from the State Bond Commission towards its multi-phase, $220 million redevelopment of the Dixwell Plaza shopping center to the north of the city’s downtown, called ConnCAT Place. The project received zoning approval late last year and hopes to convert the car-oriented retail plaza into a park, offices and classrooms for a job-training program, a community health center, a daycare center, an 18,000-square-foot food hall, a 20,000-square-foot grocery store, 5,600 square feet of additional retail space, a performing arts venue, a police substation and a 184-unit residential mid-rise, 20 percent of whose apartments will be set aside as affordable units.

Other development projects receiving financing this week include:

• Colt Gatway, Hartford: $1.5 million to help finance a 45-unit residential development in the Colt Armory complex.
• Sheldon Oak Central Inc., Hartford: $3.75 million to aid the demolition and redevelopment of the MLK Apartments public housing complex into 155 affordable and market-rate units.
• Baldwin Holdings, Bridgeport: $1.76 million for the first phase of a 50-unit affordable housing development on the site of a former public housing complex.
• City of Ansonia: $6.5 million to aid in the redevelopment of the former Ansonia Copper and Brass factory.
• City of Meriden: $3 million to help fund the renovation and reuse of a historic mill complex into 82 mixed-income housing units.
• City of Waterbury: $10 million for the demolition of buildings and remediation of pollution on-site at 130 and 170 Freight St.