Member Spotlight
Patrick McKenna
Director of Sustainability & Real Estate
North Hartford Partnership
Celebrating North Hartford Partnership as the 2026 BuildGreenCT Green Building Impact Awards Winner for Leadership: Community Impact
BuildgreenCT helps connect those who work to make buildings and communities more sustainable and equitable. It offers us a space to learn and advocate for positive change in our towns, city and state.
Tell us about your work.
The North Hartford Partnership is a non-profit organization that works with the community to advance economic development, provide and promote clean energy investments, empower residents to access clean energy benefits, and improve health and housing conditions for the North Hartford community.
What’s your role in sustainability?
Our goal is to make North Hartford a safer, healthier and more sustainable place to live and work. We do this by transforming vacant and underutilized spaces into vibrant hubs that showcase the value and dignity of the built environment and the people who interact with it on a daily basis.
Tell us about a project you are proud of.
The project that convinced me to step away from practicing architecture was the Swift Factory in the north end of Hartford.
The former gold leaf manufacturing facility opened in 1887 and closed its doors in 2005. It was scheduled to be demolished in 2010 before local residents stepped in to save the building and invited North Hartford Partnership’s parent organization to help rehab the building to create jobs and opportunities for youth in the neighborhood.
We started construction in 2018 after 8 years of community engagement, fundraising and tenanting, and opened our doors in 2020. The building now hosts a day care, elementary school, shared office space, church and a series of incubator kitchens.
North Hartford Partnership is currently working to add a workforce development center and Resilience Hub to the building.
What motivates you?
I believe in the positive impact that good design and development without displacement can have on the social, environmental and economic issues facing our most vulnerable communities.
It is communities like North Hartford, who have faced decades of racist housing, education and financial policies that most need to be prioritized as we transition to a carbon free and more equitable society.
What are your hobbies?
I love to grow and make things, and am fortunate to have been able to turn a 1889 house in Middletown into a net zero energy home with a garden that can sustain vegetables, shrubs, flowers, fruit trees and berry bushes.
Fun Fact:
I am the proud father of four teenage girls and love coaching them to play Gaelic football and lacrosse and anything else they choose to play.