Hartford Business Journal

12 Hartford Business Journal • November 6, 2017 • www.HartfordBusiness.com W ith his state-assisted headquarters expansion done and his book of civil-engineering orders on backlog, Abul Islam had plenty to smile about on a recent Oc- tober afternoon. With a camera-equipped drone hovering overhead to memorialize the Oct. 18 occasion, the governor along with other state officials and dozens of AI Engineers Inc. (AI) staff- ers watched as Islam and wife Rubina cut a red ribbon to debut their firm's expanded Middletown headquarters at 919 Middle St., home to 132 employees. AI employs 182 total in its seven East Coast offices. The 8,000-square-foot addition to his previously 16,000-square-foot building, Islam said, will accommodate a growing workforce and workload from civil engineering design- build and construction projects on roads, bridges and other infrastructure — AI's design billings, estimated to rise 12 percent from 2016 to $36 million, will continue to climb in 2018, he said. Nearly half of the 2017 billings growth come from AI's Connecticut work. The firm has already hired the first 20 staffers as part of its commitment to hire 29 new workers — mostly engineers — by 2020, in exchange for the state providing a $1.6 million low-interest, forgivable loan to the project. "We're growing,'' said Islam, whose firm's Northeast offices stretch from New York to Virginia. "If we're going to grow at the same rate, we'll need to add more space.'' Islam admits there is one other Connecti- cut location where he still hopes to install a greatly modified version of his aborted com- mercial high-rise development in downtown Hartford's Constitution Plaza. Nine years earlier, on a dreary December day in 2008, Islam and then-Mayor Eddie Perez announced Islam's ambitious plan to raze the former Broadcast House build- ing that formerly housed WFSB Channel 3, and replace it with a 12-story, $40 mil- lion office tower. The still vacant tract is 3 Constitu- tion Plaza, at the corner of Columbus Boulevard and State Street, next door to The Spectra Boutique Apart- ments. Originally tagged the AI Technical Center, it was to serve not only as Islam's head- quarters but expose a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) envi- ronment to a new generation of engineers, architects and technologists. It also was to have space for street- level retail. But the project, to the surprise of few local real estate experts at the time who voiced skepti- cism about the need for more downtown Hartford office space, never materialized, especially after the economic slump dimmed prospects for filling the build- ing with other office and retail tenants. Islam eventually shelved his original vision Developer's Persistence With his Middletown HQs set, might Hartford be next on Abul Islam's development plate? By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com AI Engineers expanded its office footprint by a third with its recent expansion. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED HBJ PHOTO | BILL MORGAN Growing Workload Among the projects driving AI Engineers' growth is work in Waterbury, where the Middletown engineer- ing firm is managing construction and inspections on a 376,000-square-foot transit-bus maintenance facility for the state Department of Transportation, according to AI CEO Abul Islam. The firm also was involved in design and construction of the half-dozen depots along the CTfastrak busway, linking the downtowns of Hartford and New Britain. Abul Islam, founder and president of AI Engineers Inc., recently expanded his Middletown headquarters. Now, his stalled downtown Hartford development project awaits.

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