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HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JUNE 24, 2024 25 POWER 25 | REAL ESTATE R andy Salvatore is a devel- oper who is used to press conferences. His latest came in March, when he showed off his newest downtown Hartford project — sleek new apartments in space that formerly served as hotel rooms inside the Hilton Hartford hotel. The $29 million redevelopment included converting the top 11 floors of the 22-story building on Trumbull Street into 147 modern apartments. After just a month of leasing activity, 60 tenants had already signed leases in the building, indi- cating its popularity. "The Revel" apartments include a mix of studios and one- and two-bed- Carlos Mouta C arlos Mouta has spent decades investing and devel- oping in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood, seeing value in vacant factories and aging housing stock long before others. Today, Mouta continues to build momentum for the struggling neighborhood. One of his latest turn- around projects is a converted five- story, 325,000-square-foot factory at 1429 Park St. The former empty building now hosts 96 apartments on its upper floors, and a host of new small busi- nesses in lower-level retail and office space, including Dead Language Beer Project, the Petrolhead Cafe, and even a recording studio. The building is close to Mouta's other ventures, like the popular Parkville Market, a collection of food and beverage vendors in a fun setting that once was a lumberyard. Mouta is slated to turn a nearby parking lot into a 57-unit apartment building and a garage with 350 room units, with panoramic views of the city. The building's bottom floors are now home to a DoubleTree by Hilton Hartford hotel, which has 170 guest rooms. Salvatore, founder and CEO of Stamford-based RMS Cos., is one of the most impactful real estate developers in Hartford. He completed a 270-unit apart- ment building next to Dunkin' Park in 2022, and has begun work on the second of several additional multi- family properties that will add about 1,000 market-rate units around the minor league baseball stadium. In November, Salvatore paid $3.8 million for the 12.7-acre former Rens- selaer Polytechnic Institute campus, located just north of the baseball stadium. He is seeking to redevelop the site in multiple phases. The first phase will add 269 apartments. Salvatore is also preparing for a large-scale renovation of the iconic 124-room Goodwin Hotel. According to his LinkedIn profile, Salvatore founded RMS Cos. in 1996, about five years after he gradu- ated from The Wharton School of business at the University of Penn- sylvania. His company's portfolio includes projects in Connecticut and New York. Outside of Hartford, he's been particularly active in New Haven and Stamford. parking spaces. His Parkville portfolio of revitalized and repurposed properties also includes Pope Commons, 360 Main, the Hartford Design Center and the Design Center Lofts. Mouta spent most of his childhood in the city of Beira in Mozambique, then a Portuguese colony. When the country declared independence in 1975, his Portuguese parents immigrated to the U.S., ending up in Hartford. Mouta graduated from Central Connecticut State University, where he studied business and marketing, and then took a job at the Hart- ford Courant in the newspaper's circulation department. His first forays into real estate were buying up distressed proper- ties in the wake of the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s and early 90s. Randy Salvatore