Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 25, 2024 19 to crack into the industry, a means of learning and making connections. "It was a lot of knocking on doors and getting doors slammed in your face," Salvatore recalled. "It was a lot of cold calls because you don't have any relationships." Working solely on commission, Salvatore made $12,000 his first year. "I was wondering: 'What am I doing here?'" Salvatore said. "But I was learning a lot, and things were starting to click." At the end of 1994, Salvatore closed a 17,000-square-foot office lease in Stamford that came with a $75,000 commission. He finally had capital to begin acting on develop- ment plans he'd been fostering. Knowing little about construction, Salvatore had previously investigated the budding field of modular housing, including visits to factories where homes were pre-assembled. Salvatore, then 25, paid $70,000 for an eighth-of-an-acre in a middle-class residential area of Stamford and put up a modular single-family house. He did the painting and landscaping himself and hired tradespeople for the rest. That time, he borrowed $110,000 from First County Bank. Salvatore sold the property six months later for $254,000 and immediately invested the proceeds into building another house. In 1996, Salvatore formed his own brokerage outfit, RMS Real Estate Group, which still handles his company's brokerage needs. The development side of Salva- tore's endeavors snowballed as he rolled profits into larger projects. He began building two houses at a time and grew from there, taking on as much debt as he could as he built and sold properties to raise capital for the next project. At one point he had $46,000 on several credit cards. "That was always the path, just had to build it to sell it to do more," Salvatore said. A pivot RMS' first multifamily project came in 2002, when Salvatore put up a 10-unit condo building in Stamford. Again, First County was his lender. Salvatore continues to use the $2.4 billion-asset mutual bank. It financed $20 million of his $50 million, 228-unit "Asher" apartment building, which was completed in downtown Stamford this spring. In 2010, Salvatore pivoted away from a languishing condo market to focus on development and manage- ment of rental properties. His hotel arm got off the ground two years earlier, with a partnership to buy and remodel the struggling Stamford YMCA's rental housing property. After consulting with a hotel expert, Salvatore decided to transform that portion of the YMCA building into a boutique hotel. He learned the hospi- tality trade as he operated the hotel through the 2008 financial crisis. Today, much of Salvatore's focus is on multifamily development. He is working on a 237-unit apartment building and associated parking garage on a 5-acre lot just southwest of Hartford's Dunkin' Park minor league baseball stadium. He estimates devel- opment costs of up to $70 million. RMS is putting up a roughly $75 million, 204-unit apartment building at 370 West Ave., in Norwalk. The firm is also nearing completion of a $30 million, 112-unit building at 188 Lafayette St., in New Haven. That project is the last phase of a five-year effort to build 650 apartments in the "City Crossing" development. RMS is building a 134-unit, $65 million apartment building in White Plains, New York. And in Stamford, RMS is working its way through permitting a 280-unit multifamily building in downtown Stamford, which Salvatore expects will cost more than $100 million to build. Like father, like sons Brandon and Kyle Salvatore grew up around job sites. They've known RMS' longest-serving employees since they were children. The brothers said they never felt pressured to go into the family busi- ness, but were drawn to development and real estate regardless. "His advice was you need to find out what you love to do," Kyle Salva- tore said. "I think it was part of our family's DNA, that entrepreneurial spirit and growing a business for yourself. Brandon and I grew up in the context that whatever we did, it had to be something we loved, and ulti- mately, we would want to help build a business or build it ourselves." After college, Brandon Salvatore spent three years working for the lodging capital markets team of real estate services firm Newmark in New York, before deciding to go to work with his father for a more "hands-on" experience. He was attracted by the potential to help oversee expansion. Brandon Salvatore said he's spent his time with RMS learning about and standardizing its operations. The firm is looking to add to the technology base of its hotels, including features like mobile check-in. The company just rolled out a streaming platform that allows guests to connect their online video streaming services to the hotels' televisions. On the multifamily side, Kyle Salvatore said he sees growth potential in affordable housing. It's a growing need that the government is increasingly supporting. "Because we have the capacity to build, manage and own it ourselves, we should be more involved," Kyle Salva- tore said. "Communities are desper- ately calling for us. I think it's a natural progression we want to get into." Kyle Salvatore's first job out of college was as a consultant with Ernst & Young, advising on large- scale government infrastructure projects. After about a year, he joined his brother as a broker at Newmark, where he focused on office and multifamily investment sales. Their offices were on the same floor. At Newmark, Kyle Salvatore said he developed a passion for real estate. He left the company after a year to join RMS. "If RMS didn't exist, both me and Brandon would probably do exactly what we are doing now by ourselves," Kyle Salvatore said. "So, it made a lot of sense for us to join." Randy Salvatore developed "The Asher" in downtown Stamford, a $50 million, 228-unit apartment complex. RMS COS.' CT MULTIFAMILY PROPERTIES • The Revel: 147 units, Hartford • The Asher: 228 units, Stamford • The Pennant at North Crossing: 270 units, Hartford • Pierpont at City Crossing: 223 units, New Haven • Aura at City Crossing: 104 units, New Haven • The Maddox at City Crossing: 90 units, New Haven • Parkside at City Crossing: 110 units, New Haven • The Mason at City Crossing: 112 units, New Haven • Mayfair Square: 70 townhomes, Danbury • Simeon Village: 101 units, Bethel • Sleepy Hollow: Stamford RMS COS.' CT HOTEL PORTFOLIO • The Blake Hotel, New Haven • The Lloyd, Stamford • The Goodwin, Hartford • Hotel Zero Degrees, Danbury • The Watershed, Norwalk A kitchen inside one of RMS Cos.' Stamford apartments. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

• Cover