Hartford Business Journal

10 Hartford Business Journal • December 17, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com while visits to UConn Medical Group providers were up more than 16 percent — all details disclosed in its October solicitation. In April, it completed a two-year, $100 million implementation of an Epic electronic medical record system. It's the same type of system used by many major area hospitals. "We are a stronger institution than we've been in years past," Ag- wunobi said. However, he's concerned about longer-term headwinds, such as nar- row networks that exclude UConn, lessening its patient volume. Besides the ongoing partnership evaluation, Agwunobi said another significant 2018 development was UConn Health ceding its contract to provide healthcare services to more than 13,000 in- mates in the state prison system. Concerns were raised over prisoners' quality of care in recent years, but Agwunobi said UConn Health asked to give up the contract because it was losing money for the health system. She estimates there are roughly 34,000 college students in the Hart- ford region. "I don't think people appreciate how many students we have right here," Free said. "If we can have people think about downtown Hartford as the place to go eat, hang- out, to live, I think it will help the businesses and it's good for the students." USJ this year also took major steps in planning a $10 million renovation of its aging student center, McGov- ern Hall, and a $16 million expansion of its O'Connell Athletic Center. The school will break ground on the student-center renovation in May, with completion by year-end 2019. Meantime, the athletics- center expansion will debut in 2020. The new athletics center, Free says, will accommo- date more student and community use, and larger crowds for its new men's basketball team, which has garnered national attention under head coach Jim Calhoun. "I think the athletics on campus can help to generate the type of environment that is attractive to all students," she said. bonus in the first quarter to full-time employees who were below the vice president level. It also announced it would increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour by the end of 2018. Finally, beginning in 2018, Webster said it would increase its annual phil- anthropic and community invest- ment by $1 million. Also in 2018, Webster's customer- care center was ranked first in the New England region for call-center satisfaction in the J.D. Power 2018 U.S. retail satisfaction study. Meantime, Webster also pared its bank-branch network. In May, Hartford lender Unit- ed Financial Inc., parent of United Bank, announced its acquisition of six Web- ster branches. Two were in Groton and Waterford; three were in the Spring- field, Mass., area; and the last in Westerly, R.I. Ciulla started in banking in 1987 as a loan officer at former Connecticut National Bank in downtown Hartford. Later, he worked at a predecessor of People's United Bank before pursuing his law degree at Fordham University. In 2004, he joined Web- ster's commercial-loan unit. Last December, Ciulla com- pleted his one-year term as chair of the state's leading business lobby, the Connect- icut Business & Industry Association. Ciulla says he cannot think of any- thing he would have done differently managing the parent company and its two bank subsidiaries. "There are not really any kind of decisions … that I'd like to take back,'' he said. Looking to 2019, Ciulla said he hopes to see continuation of the positive momentum of the national and Con- necticut economies. He also said he will not relent in his push for growth at Webster Bank and HSA Bank, which at Sept. 30 had $7.2 billion in deposits and assets under administration via linked investment accounts. "We'll continue to execute on that strategy,'' Ciulla said. million of transit-oriented develop- ment projects in that corridor, and that's before it opened." There were challenges in 2018. Early in the year, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy put on hold more than 400 DOT projects worth close to $4.25 billion, citing revenue shortfalls in the state's Special Transportation Fund. The halt ended at the end of the legislative session, when lawmak- ers transferred tax revenue funds for transportation use in fiscal 2019. That action stabilized the transpor- tation fund for the next few years, but it's unclear what will hap- pen after that. What did become clear to- ward the end of 2018 is voter support of transportation funding. The state elector- ate in November approved a "lockbox" measure that requires all money in the transportation fund to be spent on transportation-related uses. The DOT also proposed to increase spending on infrastructure projects in a five-year, $12.1 billion capital spend- ing plan released in November. The plan, which basically serves as a DOT wishlist, would be a steep increase over what was actually spent during the previous half-decade — about $7.7 billion. Redeker said complet- ing the projects necessary to improve highways and bridges would require a spending increase of about 50 percent. He identified tolls as one possible revenue generator. DOT officials in November released a tolling study conducted by engi- neering consultants CDM Smith that said installing 82 toll gantries across the state could generate $1 billion in annual revenue. Going into 2019, Redeker, whose fu- ture as DOT commissioner under Gov.- elect Ned Lamont remains uncertain, said he hopes to continue progress on highway and bridge projects with the intent of spurring economic growth. "It's a long-term strategy," Redeker said. "You've got to spend money to get money." and economic development. It repre- sents a pivot in the foundation's strat- egy, which has traditionally focused on funding nonprofits or school districts in central Connecticut. Williams said he wants the fund to operate as a supplement to the foundation's approximately $35 mil- lion in annual grant-making and in- vest in overlooked and underserved communities. The fund has already been active: In October, the Hartford Foundation's board authorized a $1.2 million invest- ment in Dillon Stadium, which is being renovated for professional soccer, and a $500,000 investment to upgrade Colt Park. "The idea here is to be able to bring capital in a very inclusive way that is over and above what we have traditionally done," Williams said. "That often has higher risk profile, but a potential for a higher community return." Going into 2019, Williams said, the Hartford Foundation will continue to seek out invest- ments aimed at the issue of "food deserts" in Greater Hartford. Williams also oversaw the updating of the foundation's computer system, which was about 20 years old, he said. The foundation also an- nounced a $2.9 million fund that will be split among all 29 communities it serves. Under the plan, each town will have its own fund by spring of 2019, and will receive $100,000 over two years. Half the fund's money will be granted when a community advisory committee of local residents is established. Looking ahead, Williams expects to complete the foundation's three-year strategic plan in 2019. "We're using a lot of the conversa- tions that we were having with our stakeholders about how we would begin to frame our strategic plan for the coming year," Williams said. Five We Watched in 2018 >> Agwunobi continued >> Williams continued >> Redeker continued >> Ciulla continued >> Free continued

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