Robert Landino - For the Love of Connecticut

In the business world, the term ‘well diversified’ is always well received. Not only is Robert Landino one of the most diversified corporate leaders in the Constitution State, but his positive outlook about the future of Connecticut’s economy is always well received.

Robert Landino’s experience as Chief Executive Officer of the Centerplan Companies—typically the item that stands out on his business profile—is only part of the story. He was previously chairman of Greenskies Renewable Energy (and an early investor), a photovoltaic solar integration development company, and chairman of Dolan, a Los Angeles design and manufacturing company that creates and markets women’s contemporary fashions.

Construction, renewable energy and fashion, and at the age of 59 still chock full of ideas, perhaps even ‘well diversified’ doesn’t do him justice. Maybe ‘corporate wunderkind’ would be more appropriate.

Centerplan, a North Haven-based real estate acquisition, construction and investment firm that Robert Landino founded eight years ago, maintained principal ownership in over $150 million of real estate assets in retail, health care, urban mixed-use and residential properties throughout the northeast and mid-Atlantic. Centerplan Companies were involved in the redevelopment and construction of all the highway service plazas in Connecticut—a five-year, $178 million public-private partnership transforming the appearance of Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway.

Most of his projects have roots in the New Haven region, and that only makes sense since the Elm City is part of the Landino family tree.

“My father Al Landino grew up in tenement houses on Grand Avenue that were demolished as part of the I-91/I-95 interchange project," Robert Landino explains. “After World War II he went to the University of Connecticut on the G.I. Bill and studied civil engineering—the first member of his Italian-American family to go to college.” In the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, the senior Landino became New Haven’s city engineer when the city embarked on a bold but controversial experiment of urban renewal. It was a vital and vibrant time in the city's history, and the nation watched the experiment unfold with great interest.

So did his son Robert Landino.

“It was an ideologically noble attempt to transform urban blight and mitigate poverty and the sociological challenges that seemed insurmountable at the time,” he reflects.

Growing up in the Beaver Hills neighborhood, young Robert was as interested in seeing things being built as he was in being a bit of an impetuous youth. After graduating from private school, Robert Landino, like his father before him, studied civil engineering, first at UConn and then the University of Hartford. With an engineering license in hand, he accepted a job with a New York City design firm that was working on an urban renewal project involving Manhattan's West Side Highway. He also worked briefly for a New Haven civil engineering firm before going out of on his own. He founded his own civil engineering and transportation planning company, which in time diversified into architecture and environmental services, and eventually employed 250 professionals at nine offices.

After he sold that firm, Robert Landino explored politics. He won election as a selectman in Old Saybrook, running as a Democrat in a highly Republican district. Then a state House seat opened in 1994, which he sought and won. He served three terms. After that—when his three children were still young—he retired from politics.

But before long he was bored. “So I started Centerplan,” he states proudly.

With the new company, Robert Landino recognized an opportunity to choose only those projects in which he had personal interest. What’s more, with his experience in diversification, in navigating fiscal, municipal and other challenges, and taking an underdog’s stance to winning, he decided to do whatever he could to continue to help the state that helped him become a well diversified corporate wunderkind.

One of his ongoing passions is to build residential mixed-use buildings in downtown New Haven, and he began working on one such project in 2006. Originally dubbed CollegePlace, it was modified over time by economic and political forces into a $65 million effort redubbed “College & Crown." That’s just one of several urban mixed-use projects in New Haven and surrounding communities in which he’s involved.

“I believe New Haven is experiencing a renaissance,” Robert Landino asserts. “In many ways its time has come. I’m not one of those folks who talks about how you cannot do business in Connecticut. I prefer to talk about how you can do business in Connecticut.”