Michael Puffer

2 weeks ago | hartfordbusiness.com | Michael Puffer

A Branford-based development group has paid $3.99 million for the 65.5-acre MassMutual office complex off Interstate 91 in Enfield. The property had been on the market since early 2018, when MassMutual announced plans to move about 1,500 jobs to Springfield. That cost the town its largest single employer. In a deed recorded May 5, MassMutual sold its campus, and a neighboring sliver of land, to limited liability companies sharing a Branford address with MB Financial Group.

2 weeks ago | hartfordbusiness.com | Michael Puffer

For years, Waterbury officials touted Ideal Fish — a fish-farming venture set up in a former brass factory — as an example of the innovative business growth in the city. It was a good story. Former investment banker Eric Pedersen launched the business that harvests European bass, commonly known as branzino. The fish is popular among high-end restaurants and grocery stores that largely rely on farming operations in the Mediterranean Sea for their supply.

2 weeks ago | hartfordbusiness.com | Michael Puffer

It wasn’t easy for Mark Bean to find a space where he could transform his lifelong love of video games into a business mixing gaming, food and a bar. Some real estate brokers didn’t return phone calls. Others canceled appointments, said Bean, a 48-year-old nurse and first-time entrepreneur. Hartford-based NAI Lexington Commercial President Kevin Kenny invited Bean to his office in Hartford’s Gold Building office tower.

2 weeks ago | hartfordbusiness.com | Michael Puffer

East Hartford officials have committed millions of public dollars to a private redevelopment of the Founders Plaza office park, with plans calling for roughly 1,000 apartments mixed with retail and other commercial uses. Now, East Hartford Mayor Connor Martin aims to chip in some more, using $170,000 of a $4 million “impact fee” paid by a warehouse developer to help pay for planning associated with the project.

2 weeks ago | hartfordbusiness.com | Michael Puffer

Busy developer Avner Krohn has sold an Enfield retail property for $2 million to a medical spa that is currently a tenant in the building. Krohn paid $390,000 for the 1940-vintage, 7,742-square-foot retail strip building on 1.3 acres at 841 Enfield St., in 2015, and then extensively rehabbed the building. Krohn has been focused on apartment developments in Connecticut in recent years, particularly in downtown New Britain.