Hartford Business Journal

HartfordBusiness.com | February 22, 2021 | Hartford Business Journal 29 H artford Mayor Luke Bronin and Sara Bronin also make up one of the region's foremost power couples. Mayor Bronin is in his second term in office and his tenure has been marked by several significant issues including convincing the legislature to pass a massive $550-million-plus long-term bailout to help the city avert potential bankruptcy, and firing and then hiring a new developer to complete Dunkin' Donuts Park and the surrounding development. Last summer, developer Randy Salvatore broke ground on the $50 million first phase of the Downtown North development surrounding the baseball stadium, which will include 270 apartments. Bronin also helped with the $14 million redevelopment of Dillon Stadium, though the project's bidding process has been shrouded in controversy. Overall, Bronin, a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate who previously served as general counsel to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and held senior posts in the U.S. Treasury Department, has been credited with stabilizing the city's tenuous finances through budget cuts, renegotiated union contracts, and greater state funding. More recently, his focus has been on guiding the city through the COVID-19 pandemic and trying to get under control a spike in violent crime. He is also a man of great political ambition. He explored a run for governor in 2018 and likely has an eye on higher public office in the future. Sara Bronin, also a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School alum, formerly chaired the Hartford Planning and Zoning Commission, where she was credited with reforming the city's zoning codes to make it easier for private development. She is also a licensed architect and law professor at UConn, where she focuses on property, land use, historic preservation, green building and renewable energy law. Luke & Sara Bronin 9 Alan Lazowski 10 A lan Lazowski's national parking empire took a hit over the past year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but his influence in Hartford has only grown. The LAZ Parking founder has increasingly gotten into real estate development and investment in Hartford in recent years. He and New York landlord Shelbourne Global Solutions LLC teamed up in 2019 to buy the Gold Building for $70.5 million, and are partners, with developer Martin Kenny, on an ongoing $100-million redevelopment of downtown's Pratt Street corridor. In December Lazowski and Kenny acquired a 50% ownership stake in four large Class A apartment buildings in downtown Hartford, known as the Spectra apartments. They contain a combined 554 mostly market-rate apartments. In normal times, LAZ Parking operates more than 1 million parking spaces in thousands of locations across the country, with 15,000 employees. However, Lazowski has been managing headwinds from the pandemic, which has led to widespread event cancellations, creating far less demand for LAZ's parking lots. The son of Holocaust survivors, he served as a member of the United States Holocaust Museum's Council and is a current national board member of the NAACP. He also serves on the boards of many local nonprofits. 2021 POWER 50

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