Dunkin' Donuts Park in Hartford. File photo.

The stalled Downtown North development sites around Hartford’s Dunkin’ Park baseball stadium suddenly find themselves back on track after the city and a developer settled a long-running legal battle.

Middletown developer Centerplan settled its $90 million lawsuit against the city for kicking it off the Downtown North redevelopment project before the pandemic, alleging shoddy work and late delivery of the stadium.

The city subsequently replaced Centerplan with Stamford’s RMS Cos.

Centerplan lost its suit in 2019, but that verdict was overturned by the State Supreme Court on appeal last year. The two parties were looking at another lengthy and expensive jury trial starting next spring, and the lawsuits had put a stop to new developments on the empty lots around the stadium. RMS Cos. recently asked officials for permission to move public funding from its planned DoNo apartment projects to a new multifamily building site on a former college campus nearby.

“While I remain confident that the City would have prevailed again at another trial, and while I wish the 2019 jury verdict had ended the matter for good, the litigation would have cost many more millions of dollars in legal fees, would have left the city with ongoing risk, and could have prevented development from moving forward for many years,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said in a statement. “This settlement is the responsible thing to do for Hartford, and it’s a clear validation of our decision to terminate Centerplan and call the bond in 2016.”

The settlement will force the city to pay $9.9 million to Arch Insurance Co. from a pot of money it had already set aside. Arch paid out $34 million to help finish the stadium in 2016 and 2017. Arch will pay Centerplan $1.8 million as part of the settlement.

The deal will also let RMS Cos. “immediately” move forward with its projects around Dunkin’ Park, Bronin’s office said

“The development around the ballpark will generate tax revenue for the City, reconnect neighborhoods that have long been kept apart by I-84 and the sea of surface parking lots, maintain our economic development momentum, and add hundreds of units of housing as part of the broader mixed-use development,” Bronin said.