Hartford Business Journal

HartfordBusiness.com | March 22, 2021 | Hartford Business Journal 11 stations in all our parking lots and garages … and we'll be taking sections of our garages and creating 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot micro- warehouses, and doing picking and packing for last-mile delivery." On a recent late winter evening, Lazowski sat down with the Hartford Business Journal at LAZ's new downtown Hartford headquarters in the iconic Gold Building. The hometown parking magnate talked about the pandemic's effect on his business and employees, the new direction LAZ Parking will take over the next few years and how his business fits into the future of an ever-changing digital economy. Deep impact During a recent tour of his company's 34,000-square-foot headquarters in the Gold Building's 13th and 14th floors, Lazowski pointed out conference space and executive offices in the silver-tinged ultra-modern looking space. He also stopped occasionally to take in the panoramic views of downtown Hartford — from the state Capitol and Bushnell Park to Constitution Plaza and the I-84 Mixmaster bridge. His grin portrays the pride of a man who owns the most recognizable building in the city where he started out parking cars. "I had a little bit of an attachment to this building because one of my great mentors in Hartford, David Chase, built it back in '74, and he gave us a real help in our business early on," said Lazowski who teamed up with New York realty investor Shelbourne Global Solutions in 2019 to purchase the Gold Building for $70.5 million. The late Chase gave a 20-something-year-old Lazowski and business partner Martin Kenny — now a prominent downtown Hartford developer — one of their earliest business deals, handling some of his downtown parking facilities. Over the next several decades, Lazowski would grow LAZ Parking into a behemoth managing 1.3 million parking spaces across 420 cities by March 2020. COVID-19 struck almost immediately after the company moved its headquarters from 15 Lewis St., where HBJ was a former tenant. Pre-COVID LAZ Parking would have about 220 employees roaming its halls in Hartford; on some days during the pandemic there have been fewer than 10 LAZ employees downtown as many of its corporate office staffers continue to work from home. It's hard to express the degree to which the pandemic hit not only LAZ's business, but also clients that pay the company to handle parking. "We either own, lease or manage parking for universities, airports, arenas, stadiums, commercial office buildings," Lazowski said, listing many of the locations that were forced to close or significantly limit their capacities over the last year. "As an example, we ran [parking for] about 250 hotels throughout the country. … If a hotel isn't open the parking lot or garage isn't open." About 150 LAZ Parking locations, mostly hotels, temporarily closed over the last year. The company expects they'll be back up and running in September. Lazowski said he, as former chair of the National Parking Association, personally lobbied members of Congress like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass an additional $600 in weekly unemployment payments in last year's CARES Act. He said that gave him some comfort that his furloughed workers who live paycheck to paycheck would be taken care of. As the pandemic continues to subside, Lazowski said he believes homebound workers will start to return to downtown Hartford and other cities where his company manages parking operations. "I firmly believe that people are going to want to come back to work," Lazowski said. "The new work week might be four days a week instead of five days a week, but people will be coming back to work." Future of parking While business may have slowed last year, Lazowski's strategic planning didn't. In fact, he was plotting out the company's future, which will increasingly be tied to emerging technologies and markets. It's as if he's built a skunk works operation trying to develop new ways to leverage LAZ Parking facilities — financially and otherwise — into new business opportunities. He's got plenty of ideas. For example, he wants to roll out electric vehicle chargers at many of his parking lots, to prepare for a future in which more non-gas powered trucks and cars roam U.S. streets and highways. LAZ would either purchase, install and manage the chargers independently, or work with another company, Lazowski said. The Edison Electric Institute, an association that represents all U.S. investor-owned electric companies, said the country had 1 million electric vehicles on the road by the end of 2018, and projected that number will shoot up to 18.7 million by 2030. "The gas station of the future is going to be getting [your car] electric charged in parking lots and garages, among other places," Lazowski said. He is interested in other green technologies, including possibly 14 Bobala Road 3rd Floor Holyoke, MA 01040 Tel: 413.536.3970 Headquarters 280 Trumbull St 24th Floor Hartford, CT 06103 Tel: 860.522.3111 One Hamden Center 2319 Whitney Ave, Suite 2A Hamden, CT 06518 Tel: 203.397.2525 Largest Connecticut-Based Accounting Firm For over 60 years, Whittlesey's team of professionals has provided superior service and value-added advice, with specialization in the following areas: Assurance Advisory Tax Technology Learn more at WAdvising.com Y E A R S

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