Two of Parkville's anchor addresses are both mid-change this fall, and neither one is changing the way you'd expect. Real Art Ways, the arts nonprofit at 56 Arbor Street, broke ground last November on a $24 million expansion that will quadruple its screening capacity. Two blocks over, Parkville Market has no groundbreaking to point to, no ribbon-cutting on the calendar, because vendors come and go without fanfare. If you live around here, understanding which of these two clocks you're looking at tells you a lot about what's actually worth checking on this month, and what you can safely ignore until it's finished.
What's Actually Happening at 56 Arbor Street
Real Art Ways has run out of the same Arbor Street building, a former Underwood Typewriter Company space, since the 1970s, with a single screen for its independent film programming. That changes under the current expansion. The plans call for four movie screens, up from one, along with a new live-performance venue for theater and concerts, classrooms and workshop space, renovated galleries, and a full-service café. Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, House Speaker Matt Ritter, and Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam all showed up for the ceremonial groundbreaking, alongside Executive Director Will K. Wilkins and Board Chair Yedalis Ruiz. Construction was expected to start that February.
What construction hasn't done is take the building offline. As of mid-September, Real Art Ways was still mounting shows at 56 Arbor Street, including a solo pop-up exhibition of new work by artist Hanieh Kashani, on view by appointment through September 24. Kashani, who joined the organization last year as a grant writer, set up a working studio in the same building where the expansion is underway, and staff liked what they saw enough to give it a show. That's the detail worth holding onto if you've been assuming the fence around a $24 million project means the doors are closed. They're not. The programming and the construction are running on parallel tracks, and the exhibition calendar is the one that's still telling you something new week to week.
Two Blocks Away, the Vendor Roster Changes Over Time
As Hartford Business reported, Parkville Market opened in 2022 inside the former Capitol City Lumber Co. building at 1400 Park Street, and developer Carlos Mouta built it to work this way from the start. The market has 22 vendor stalls, ranging from 200 to 400 square feet, and Mouta has said directly that the building is meant to carry a rotating cast rather than a fixed one. That's not a hedge against underperformance. It's the operating model.
The clearest evidence of how that model actually plays out came in 2025, when the market filled back up to its full 22 stalls after adding four new vendors over about two months:
- TacOcho, a fried taco stand, opened May 15
- Pasta Y Amor, serving classic pastas and Argentinian dishes, opened May 1
- Lions Den, a vegan food outlet with two other Hartford locations, opened its Parkville stall April 1
- Sugar Bean, a coffee shop with fresh pastries, also opened April 1
None of that required a press conference. It required four leases and a spring. That's the difference between the two clocks on this corner of Hartford. Real Art Ways is spending years and eight figures on one structural leap it will only make once. Parkville Market's vendor lineup changes on its own timeline, with new vendors joining over time.
The Nights That Repeat Whether or Not Anything Else Changes
Underneath both of those stories sits a third layer that doesn't depend on construction timelines or lease turnover at all: the recurring calendar. Parkville Market's Friday night Salsa Under the Stars series has run through its parking lot in past summers, stretching from late May into September with a DJ and dance floor set up outside. The market also carries a standing weekly lineup that has included trivia nights and drag brunch, according to the market's own event listings, on top of whatever new vendor happens to be behind the counter that month.
Real Art Ways runs its own version of the same idea. Its Creative Cocktail Hour, held on a recurring basis, pairs live music and food trucks with local artisans inside the same Arbor Street building where the expansion is underway. Neither of these series waits for anything to finish. They're the connective tissue that keeps the neighborhood's weekly rhythm intact while the bigger, slower change happens in the background.
What This Actually Means If You're Nearby
If you're waiting to see what Parkville looks like once Real Art Ways finishes its expansion, that's a multi-year watch, and the organization's own groundbreaking coverage didn't put a firm completion date on it. But that timeline has almost nothing to do with what's worth checking this month. The exhibition calendar at 56 Arbor Street is already moving, pop-up show by pop-up show, inside the same walls that are being rebuilt around it. And the food hall two blocks away has already added four new vendors to its 22 stalls this decade without slowing down or needing anyone to notice.
The neighborhood isn't waiting on one big reveal. It's running two different kinds of change at once, on two different clocks, and the interesting part is knowing which one to actually track.
If you're already paying attention to what's changing on this corner of Hartford, the Burgio Sousa Team keeps an eye on Parkville the same way, and we're glad to talk through what we're seeing whenever you want a local read on it.
