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Jasko Development Principal Avner Krohn spoke at a Real Estate Finance Association (REFA) event in downtown New Britain and highlighted several ongoing real estate projects in the city’s downtown. The aim of the event was to highlight private/public real estate developments in the Hardware City.
Krohn highlighted three of his ongoing projects in New Britain:

• The Brit, a $20-million project at 267 Main St. will feature 107 units at market rate and 5,450 square feet of retail space and a restaurant.
• The Strand, a $20-million-plus, 100-unit building on Main St. that will feature 4,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space. Construction is expected to start in late summer with occupancy slated for 15 months later. 
• The Highrailer, a $25-million project at 283 Main St. that is under construction and scheduled to be completed with 114 units in December 2023. The project will also include 6,000 square feet of retail space and a restaurant.

Krohn, who has had a long working relationship with the city, said he’s seen “a lot of young individuals coming and moving into the downtown for market-rate housing. These (apartment buildings) are still a significant discount to similar housing outside of New Britain. There is just not enough housing in the downtown, which is part of the problem. These projects are taking often dilapidated vacant buildings and vacant structures and turning them into vibrant properties.”

Hartford Courant (Don Stacom)

Avner Krohn and Brian Zelman, partners in the Jasko Zelman 1 LLC development company, have said Concourse Park will be geared to people seeking plentiful amenities, stylish buildings and modern furnishings, all in apartments designed to accommodate lifestyles that involve more work from home.

“This is going to be a premiere live, work and play community,” Zelman told planners this summer. “Lifestyles have really changed — people are spending more time where they live. We’re trying to create a community, almost a village feel.”

Most apartments will include work nooks, and the complex will include more than 2,000 square feet of office space, Zoom rooms and conference space, Krohn has said.

Fifty years after New Britain’s Strand Theatre closed, developer Avner Krohn is buying the city-owned property as the site for a new 100-unit apartment complex with a two-floor restaurant.

The $20 million project will be themed in memory of the historic theater, and will be Krohn’s third major multistory apartment complex with ground-floor retail downtown.

“The idea is to have an all-inclusive downtown where you can eat, sleep and work, with walkability and transit-oriented development,” Krohn said Tuesday.

Hartford Business Journal
The New Britain Common Council is set to vote tonight to authorize the $125,000 sale of a city-owned lot at 157  Main St., to a subsidiary of Jasko Development for plans to construct a 100-unit apartment building and two-floor restaurant to be known as “The Strand.”

Over the past 15 years Avner Krohn, CEO of Jasko Development has revovated many long-neglected buildings in New Britain, CT. In 2021, Avner Krohn launched his most ambitious New Britain project to date, a $14-million, 107-unit luxury apartment building in the heart of downtown New Britain. Avner is also expanding his reach by developing large multi-family residential and mixed use and projects in West Hartford Center, Bloomfield and East Hartford, CT.

Despite the rocky path for office buildings since the pandemic began, developer Avner Krohn — known for huge apartment complexes in Connecticut — has just bought one in New Britain.

Krohn’s Jasko Development paid $775,000 for the historic former post office downtown, the only office building in Krohn’s portfolio.

New Britain-based developer Avner Krohn has acquired the old Post Office building at 114 West Main St. with plans to renovate the office building and find new tenants. 

The partnership of Zelman Real Estate and Jasko Development announced the enormous project will have eight buildings with three and four stories along with a 10,000-square-foot amenities center with gym and pool.

Avner S. Krohn—Chairman and CEO of New Britain-based Jasko Development—closed on the neoclassical landmark on June 1 via a registered LLC. The seller was an entity stewarded by Peter R. Knaus, whose family acquired the building in 1985 and completed an award-winning, $1.8 million renovation a year later, leasing office space at the property ever since. The purchase price was undisclosed.

The acquisition is in keeping with Krohn’s focus on working closely with city officials and the community to provide a robust mix of live-work-play elements downtown. Jasko has built five New Britain retail and residential projects and is moving forward with mixed-use developments including 107-unit The Brit at 267 Main Street and its adjacent “sister project” at Main and Columbus.

The first rental construction in six years in trendy West Hartford Center is expected to begin in a month as two forlorn buildings are torn down to make way for luxury apartments that could test the upper limits of the area’s asking rents.

The 48-unit apartment building will replace the buildings at 920 and 924 Farmington Avenue — an area considered the gateway to the heart of the Center. The new rentals could be ready by the fall of 2023.

The mixed-use project — expected to cost more than $15 million — has been christened “The Byline” after a writer’s credit at the top of a newspaper story. The name also draws on the town’s legacy of publishing and being the birthplace of Noah Webster.