Heilmanns Invest Success For A Planned Hotel Downtown

Sometimes you throw something up on Facebook and it takes on an applauding life of its own.

Black Rockers Niels and Callie Heilmann have been going about their business deliberatively putting the pieces together for a planned hotel in the historic “Post Building” Downtown that housed the newsroom of the Connecticut’s Post’s predecessor about a century ago, a structure ironically just steps from the current editorial department on Broad Street.

The four-level brick building at 49 Cannon Street was built 1891-1892 when the city was very much a horse and carriage community shaped by impresario P.T. Barnum, the structure’s aesthetics similar to the Barnum Museum.

The city sans a hotel, the former Holiday Inn now the 100-unit Park City Place, but pieces are coming together to sate a market for potentially multiple lodging destinations. OIB’s Facebook page is brimming with applause at the news of the Heilmann’s plans. They have not made a formal announcement about their venture, preferring to piece together the logistics prior to sharing the details that could come in early 2024.

Land records show Made In Bridgeport, their limited liability corporation, purchased the building for $1.2 million in April, 2022.

A growing synergy Downtown merits a hotel or two or perhaps three: 6,000-seat Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater, 10,000-seat Total Mortgage Arena, annual Sound On Sound Music Festival, growing restaurant choices.

McLevy Hall, the original City Hall, named for Socialist Mayor Jasper McLevy, 1933-57, is another potential hotel site. Across the Pequonnock River nearby the Christoph family could also break ground for a hotel at the Steelpointe Harbor redevelopment area early next year.

Niels Heilmann brings mighty education and business credentials to the table: graduate of Cornell University with a double MD/MBA from Columbia University, he built his financial success as the founder and portfolio manager of Elion Investments, an investment firm at Millennium Partners, not a bad neighborhood to navigate.

Niels and Callie founded Bridgeport Generation Now and its political arm Bridgeport Generation Now Votes. Niels serves as treasurer.

His bio on the Gen Now website declares: “Niels’s favorite thing about Bridgeport is the raw potential of its downtown to become a vibrant city center that reflects the myriad of cultures represented in the city’s population.”

Callie has a degrees in Women’s Studies and Art History from Tulane University as well as a Master’s of Arts at New York University in Visual Culture and a Master’s in Education from Hunter College, City University of New York.

They both seek change in the current makeup of city government.

Meanwhile they are investing in their community that brings a new level of commitment to the table and nod of good will even from critics of their political activity.

You look down the road and see a number of things teed up that could transform Bridgeport economically.

Here’s hoping the timing bestows success.