Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com February23,2015•Hartford Business Journal 3 Small tenants, big returns for this CT landlord By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com F or nearly a century, The Landmark Building at 760 Hopmeadow St. has been a visible anchor in Simsbury Center. Originally built in 1917 to house then-fledg- ling Simsbury Bank & Trust, the Colonial Revival structure's 14,000 square feet through the decades also has sheltered various other businesses and been renovated several times. But last summer, six months after Simsbury Bank relocated its remaining corporate staff to larger offices in town, at 86 Hopmeadow, The Landmark's long-time owners put it up for sale. That's when it caught the determined eye of Simsbury investor-landlord David Richman, whose Connecticut realty holdings include another retail-office building just up the street. "I saw this building sitting here for about six months,'' Richman said. "It was sitting empty. I told my wife this is the nicest build- ing I've ever seen. I told her we're going to buy this building. She said, 'What?'" He met with owner Landmark Partners, who bought it in 1993 to house its realty investment operations. After the bank moved out, Landmark put it up for lease or sale, but with few nibbles. "They were looking for the one tenant,'' Richman says of the previous owners. "They don't exist in this market.'' Buyer and seller settled on a $1 million price for the fully furnished, three-level building, with an extra $100,000 due once it reached full occupancy. Since then, Rich- man, who claims to have developed a keen eye about what will work and won't in repo- sitioning office and retail spaces, has reached his primary goal to fill the once-empty build- ing. Six months after buying the property on credit, it is 100 percent leased with small, locally sourced tenants. So, too, is his other building next door, at 730 Hopmeadow. "You've got to have a plan, a strategy,'' Richman said, leading a visitor on a recent tour of The Landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986. In addition to realty investing, Richman also specializes in matching people eager to own or invest in a business with sellers. His original vision always was to reposition The Landmark to cater to small tenants, offering pint-sized suites with shared common spaces, starting at $450 a month for a 12-foot by 15-foot block. But his plans quickly morphed. Bloomfield plastic surgeon Patrick R. Felice partnered with Richman to buy The Landmark, where Felice, too, is a tenant. Two capital- investment firms in which Felice is a founding principal — RS Capital and SimCap — plus a third affiliate, PC Benefits and Planning, occu- py about half the building's 14,000 square feet. "I had in my mind I wanted to put my com- panies in there,'' said Felice. "That building is just classic.'' The building's highly detailed but conser- vative interior décor, featuring hallway chan- deliers and wainscoting on walls — remnants from its days as a bank building — convey an air of stability when RS and SimCap court billion-dollar fund managers to invest assets with them. Also, ownership of such a recog- nized office building, he said, makes him feel like he's preserving a piece of local history. The Hartford's campus Three miles away from The Landmark building, at 200 Hopmeadow St., in the town's Weatogue section, sits another Simsbury office building. At 641,000 square feet, this one sig- nificantly dwarfs The Landmark's space foot- print. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has had its sprawling 173-acre campus on the market for more than a year. Richman said he has no interest in buying the The Hartford's property, but he does have some ideas for repositioning it. "The Hartford should donate it to UConn. I would make a campus there,'' he said. "I would make it an education campus.'' Yale, University of Hartford, Tunxis Commu- nity College also should consider locating class- rooms in the building, he said. Richman's other suggestion for the site: Declare the building and land an enterprise zone for startup businesses. Hartford Life moved some of its opera- tions into a newer office building in Bloom- field, and is set to fully vacate its Simsbury campus a year from now. Last summer, Simsbury, working with The Hartford and listing agent CBRE-New England, devised a form-based code for the property in which all the zoning and design parameters for a particular development — from the usage, density and height limits of on-site structures to the number of parking spaces — have all been approved up front. This is meant to make the property more attractive to buyers-investors. Subscribe it's in print Subscribe today and get access to the information that Central Connecticut business people and decision makers use every day. To subscribe call 845-267-3008 or go to www.HartfordBusiness.com You'll find it in print • Need to grow your busiNess? • research your competitioN? • FiNd hartFord's latest busiNess News aNd ecoNomic treNds? G r e at e r H a r t f o r d ' s B u s i n e s s n e w s w w w. H a r t f o rd B u s i n e s s . c o m for more B2B news visit March 31, 2014 Volume 22, number 19 $3.00 subscribe online June 5, 2014 Only 10 weeks until C T B E x p o . c o m Index ■ Reporter's Notebook: PG. 5 ■ Week in Review: PG. 6 ■ The List: PG. 10 ■ Deal Watch: PG. 11 ■ Nonprofit Notebook: PG. 19 ■ Opinion & Commentary: PG. 20 Faces oF Business Main Street Mainstay Manchester's Bray Jewelers has survived for almost 100 years. Read about the family business' secrets to success and what makes customers keep coming back. PG. 3 Focus: economic DeveloPment Social Entrepreneurship Hartford business accelerator aims to nurture socially conscious businesses. PG. 8 Music copyright lawsuits cost restaurants unexpected thousands By Matt Pilon mpilon@HartfordBusiness.com A few years ago, nine songs were played inside Shelton's Vazzy's Cucina restaurant that ended up costing owners John Vazzano and Vincent L. Noce $18,000. That's because an agent of licensing giant Broadcast Music Inc., which represents the artists who owned the tracks, attested to being present when the tunes were played and sued Vazzano and Noce for copyright infringement, claiming the restaurant's music qualified as a public per- formance. Under federal copyright law, that meant the restaurant had to pay for the rights to play the songs, BMI said. Vazzano said he thinks a private party actually played the tunes. Broadcast Music Inc. • Founded in 1939 • Represents more than 600,000 songwriters and publishers with more than 8.5 million songs. • Distributed 85 cents of every dollar in licensing revenue in royalties — that amounted to $814 million in fiscal 2013. By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com B y late May, the Corporation For Independent Living (CIL) expects to have in its hands title to the derelict Capewell Horse- nails factory in Hartford's South End in a bid to convert the idle eyesore into 72 apartments and an adjacent parcel into 24 affordable townhomes. If it does, it will open another fruit- ful chapter for a South End nonprofit that has leveraged — and exported — its talent as a group-home developer to shelter a diverse swath of central Connecticut's population. It, too, will be one of the final swan songs before the yearend retirement of its first and only chief executive. Since its launch in 1979 to finance, build, lease out — then ultimately give away — supportive shelter for thou- sands of the state's physically and mentally disabled, CIL has invested $458 million to construct or convert 2,205 dwelling units into shelter for 7,200 residents in Connecticut and Massachusetts. For at least a dozen years, CIL has applied that same skill set to its expand- ing for-profit realty development opera- tions that include Capewell, and a neigh- boring nonprofit-office-space cluster. In February, CIL announced it bought and will resume work on the $3.34 mil- lion Depot Crossing mixed-use project John Vazzano, owner of Vazzy's Cucina in Shelton, was upset when his restaurant had to pay $18,000 to settle a music copyright lawsuit. P h o t o | P a b l o R o b l e s Continued on page 16 Continued on page 15 Martin "Marty'' Legault, president and CEO, Corporation For Independent Living (CIL) With Legault, developer CIL soars as landlord Sued for a ong Continued Simsbury landlord David Richman bought The Landmark Building in town last summer. After some improvements, he has filled the ornate building with local tenants like hair salon owner Allie Ashmore, whose space was once a bank vault. P H O T O s | P a b l O R O b l e s

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