Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com October 10, 2016 • Hartford Business Journal 11 B O S T O N | H A R T F O R D | N E W H A V E N | S TA M F O R D | W H I T E P L A I N S | W O B U R N M U R T H A L A W . C O M Practical Experience, Strategic Approach. Murtha Cullina's comprehensive Energy Group has years of practical experience representing: ■ Industrial Facilities ■ Renewable Energy Developers ■ Merchant Generators ■ Retail Electricity Suppliers ■ Municipal Renewable Facilities ■ Schools and Universities Paul McCary pmccary@murthalaw.com 860.240.6037 MURTHA C U L L I N A Officially Produced by: Official PDF REPRINTS of your Article are now available for your MARKETING usage. All copyright fees included Share the excitement of being published! Connecticut Green Guide, Hartford Business Journal and HartfordBusiness.com content is copyrighted. Visit HartfordBusiness.com/ reprints for more info on article usage and obtaining copyright permissions. For article reprint info & pricing, contact: Jessica Baker jbaker@HartfordBusiness.com or 860.236.9998 ext. 122 or visit HartfordBusiness.com/ reprints REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK CT gets on board with e-pay cards C o n n e c t i c u t employers whose workers lack access to traditional deposit- banking and check- cashing services now have a paperless, elec- tronic option to offer. Effective among a passel of state laws starting Oct. 1, Con- necticut joined a long list of other states with its provision allowing employers to pay workers via a prepaid money card akin to an automated teller machine (ATM), debit or credit card. Doing so makes it, observers say, more convenient for thousands of Connecticut resi- dents who regularly relied on costly check- cashing services to convert their paper pay- checks to cash. "It seems to be the evolution in the way banking and transactions are handled,'' said attorney James Leva, an employment litiga- tor at law firm Day Pitney LLC. Visa was among various labor, electronic- payment organizations and other groups that submitted supporting testimony for the Connecticut measure. Visa cited data from NACHA, an electronic payments organization, that employers can save about $3 per salary payment using electronic-payment methods. Visa also cited a federal bank regulator's data that almost 4 million paychecks are lost or sto- len annually, costing them $8 to $10 per check. "Employers have told us that it is less expen- sive for them to issue the cards than to issue checks,'' state Labor Department's Wage and Workplace Standards Division Director Resa Spaziani said via email. For workers, the prepaid salary cards offer convenience and savings, but safety, too, experts say. They can use their salary to elec- tronically pay their rent or other bills — just as bank debit-cardholders do — shop for food and clothing, or make cash withdrawals at ATMs. The state Labor Department stresses that the prepaid salary card option is strictly volun- tary for employers and their workers. The mea- sure also limits the amount of fees imposed on employees who enroll. – Gregory Seay Vernon's Tri-City Plaza seeks to extend $40M loan A $40 million mortgage secured with Vernon's Tri- City Plaza Shopping Center has landed in special-servicing just weeks before it matures, while the borrower seeks a payment extension, a commercial-realty loan tracker says. Borrower Tri City Improvements LLC, of Tarrytown, N.Y., took out the 10-year, interest-only mort- gage in 2006 from Citigroup, according to New York City-based loan tracker Trepp LLC. The loan bears a 5.93 percent interest rate. Nothing in Trepp's records indicate the loan is in default. However, special servic- ing typically is one step removed from such an occurrence. Trepp data shows the debtor pledged the 295,367-square-foot retail plaza on 24 acres at 35 Talcottville Road, adjacent to I-84, as security for the loan, which was set to mature in October. Tri-City opened in 1963 and underwent renovation in 2004. Its tenants include Price Chopper Supermarket, Hartford HealthCare, Hart- ford Freight Tools, Moe's Southwest Grill and T.J. Maxx. As of 2015, Vernon's assessed value of the land beneath Tri-City was $5 million, while the improvements were valued at $20 million, according to Trepp's data. Based on those values, the borrower remits $981,806 annually in property taxes to the town. Tri-City's operator, DLC Management Corp., did not respond to a request for comment. Special servicer C-III Asset Management LLC could not be reached for comment. – Gregory Seay Price Chopper Supermarket is among tenants in Vernon's Tri-City Plaza. P H O T O | C O N T R I B U T E D P H O T O | C N N

• Cover