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www.HartfordBusiness.com June 29, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 3 Bronin: Mayor must be Hartford's 'chief economic development officer' By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com L uke Bronin may be a novice to running for political office, but he isn't new to politics. He labored in the Obama adminis- tration, working with Congress to pass the Dodd-Frank consumer-protection act. Later, he served as general counsel to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy during his first term, pro- viding Bronin a front-row seat and input into a wide range of legislative, regulatory and economic-development issues. Now Bronin, a partner in the corporate and business practice in the Hartford office of law firm Hinckley Allen, is looking to make his own name in politics, running as one of the half-doz- en Democratic candidates for Hartford mayor. A lieutenant in the Navy Reserve, Bronin is considered incumbent Mayor Pedro Segar- ra's toughest opponent. He is a married father of three who lives in downtown Hartford. How would you assess Hartford's cur- rent economy? What will be your top two economic development initiatives? We have a lot of work to do to strengthen Hartford's economy. Hartford's unemploy- ment rate on paper is a multiple of the nation- al unemployment rate, and in some neighbor- hoods, it is five, six, seven times the national unemployment rate. We need to start by being much more aggressive at retaining and recruiting busi- nesses to the city. And that's businesses big and small. The mayor needs to see himself as the chief economic development officer of the city and build and maintain relationships with employers that are here, and needs to be reaching out every single day to employ- ers around the state and the country, saying, "What would it take to get you to Hartford?" The mayor also needs to partner with busi- nesses to take advantage of the resources the state has made available for economic devel- opment, everything from Small Business Express dollars to brownfield remediation grants. We need to be active, aggressive part- ners with the business community to make sure they are in the best position possible to keep and grow jobs here. What can be done to reduce the 74.29 commercial mill property tax rate? To bring [the mill rate down] we need to be better advocates at the state level for a fairer reimbursement for Hartford. Nearly half of the property in Hartford is nontaxable because its state property, universities, hospitals, non- profits or churches. Hartford performs vital services for the region, but we are not fairly compensated. So we need to fight very hard to get a fair reimbursement from the state. We need to change the formula so that cities like Hartford, which have a greater population in poverty, a greater percentage of nontaxable property, and that perform vital regional functions, get a larger share of the PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] dollars. Secondly, we need to look for long-term grand-list growth. And I'm talking about grand-list growth where we're not giving away all of the tax increase in the form of tax abatements. Over the next five-plus years, I think we have two big opportunities. One comes with the redesign of I-84, which has reached the end of its useful life. We should be fighting hard to get it redesigned in a way that opens up some of that territory in the heart of Hartford to economic development. No. 2, the South Meadows, which is an area of hundreds of acres on the river at the intersection of two major highways. Right now, much of that area is taken up by Brain- ard Airport and by the old CRRA [Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority] power plant, neither of which are optimal uses for that piece of land. I'd like to see us work together with the state and our federal delegation to get that land used more productively. Third, we need to be better stewards of the resources that we have. We're not going to be able to cut our way out of the city's fiscal prob- lems, but we can do better than we're doing. We need to take seriously the opportunities to restructure government. Last year, as part of the budget, where we sold a $26 million parking garage to close the budget gap, the city created a restructuring commission, which was supposed to look at the opportunities to find efficiencies in city government. That committee was supposed to meet in July. It didn't meet until January, and put no ideas on the table. With multiple transportation projects in various stages of completion, what is your long-term plan for how people will move to, from and around Hartford? We need to be better at implementing those projects that are underway. If you look across Bushnell Park, you'll see a project that is months overdue and may be many months delayed before it's finished. I have concerns. Whether it's Gold Street, or whether it's the street relocations happening next to Down- town North, I have real concerns about how effectively those projects are going to be imple- mented. That is an issue of management, lead- ership and implementation. We need to get much better at that or we're going to be caus- ing needless disruption to the way traffic flows. The Capital Region Development Authority has taken a lead role in the city's economic development. How would you assess CRDA's work so far, and how would you work with CRDA? I think CRDA has done a terrific job. We are fortunate that the state of Connecticut has devoted a significant amount of resourc- es to building residential units in Hartford, to building the Front Street entertainment dis- trict, to moving UConn downtown. CRDA is H A R T F O R D MAYORAL RACE 2015 Luke Bronin, former general counsel to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, is looking to make his own name in politics by running for mayor of Hartford. Continued H B J P H O T O | G R E G O R Y S E A Y From Central Connecticut's trusted business news source. 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 24, 2014 Volume 22, number 18 $3.00 subscribe online June 5, 2014 Only 11 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. 9 ■ Deal Watch: PG. 10 ■ Nonprofit Notebook: PG. 19 ■ Opinion & Commentary: PG. 20 Focus: BankinG & Finance Fueling Growth State's insurance reinvestment tax credit spurs venture deals. PG: 8 Blight Fight Connecticut's first-ever brownfields director to lead redevelopment efforts. PG: 3 Best Places to Work in CT Check out the state's top employers in the "Best Places to Work in CT" supplement. Marijuana growers seek profits in turbulent industry By Brad Kane bkane@HartfordBusiness.com F or the past 80 years, if a business wanted to profit from growing marijuana in Connecticut, it had to do so illicitly, on the fringes of society. Not anymore. By mid-summer, four growers will have cornered the state's nascent multi-million dollar medical marijuana industry, having navigated Connecticut's rigorous regulatory waters and the federal government's insistence that what they're doing still is illegal. Continued on page 12 By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com D ecades ago, brothers Joseph Jr. and Jacob Cullman harvested enough leaf tobacco from hundreds of acres of their rich soil in Bloomfield and Windsor to become one of the nation's largest growers. The Cullman family's deep Connecticut roots were even reflected, until recently, in the wholesale landscape-nursery operations that evolved from their tobacco farm into Culbro Land Resources, what today is Grif- fin Land & Nurseries Inc. Three generations later, the Cullman broth- ers' heirs and their Griffin corporate aides are cultivating and managing crops of a wholly different kind: Mature brick-and-mortar plant- ings of office and industrial parks in central Connecticut and several fledgling sprouts in Pennsylvania's Amish countryside. Through a combination of shrewd fore- sight, patience and some fortuitous turns, Griffin Land has amassed more than 2.1 mil- lion square feet in 28 office and industrial buildings in the Hartford region alone, rank- ing it among Connecticut's top landlords. It also owns 2,000 undeveloped acres in Continued on page 12 From tobacco seeds, Griffin Land's brick, mortar garden blooms Office buildings like this Bloomfield one, along with industrial structures, are staples in Griffin Land & Nurseries Inc.'s realty portfolio. P h o t o | C o n t r i b u t e d Ethan Ruby's Theraplant is spending up to $4 million to renovate its Watertown facility to comply with Connecticut's strict regulations for growing medical marijuana. P h o t o | P a b l o r o b l e s Connecticut Medical Marijuana Growers Company Facility Location Principal Advanced Grow Labs West Haven David Lipton Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions Portland Thomas Schultz CuraLeaf Simsbury Eileen Konieczny Theraplant Watertown Ethan Ruby s o u r C e : C o n n e C t i C u t d e P a r t m e n t o f C o n s u m e r P r o t e C t i o n GrowinG LeGaLLy 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 It's the up-to-date information you need to do better business! Get local breaking business news daily! Sign up today at HartfordBusiness.com: Click on the 'SUBSCRIBE' button HBJToday and