Shana Schlossberg broke into Hartford in 2016 and has quickly built a successful coworking, networking and incubator hub downtown that aims to spur entrepreneurship and turn the Capital City into a destination for tech startups.
She — along with her brother, real estate investor/developer Benjamin Schlossberg — are both from New York but have become major Hartford boosters.
Shana’s organization called Upward is located in downtown’s Stilts Building at 20 Church St. and has connected a number of national and global startups to investors and various local corporate partners.
Numerous early-stage companies that have participated in Upward’s incubator have relocated to Hartford and/or are hiring staff here.
In 2020 Shana debuted a “co-living” space at 196 Trumbull St. called Upward Living, which provides short-term housing to out-of-town entrepreneurs and business travelers.
Upward signed a 20-year lease for its 34,000-square-foot Stilts Building space with prominent Hartford landlord Shelbourne Global Solutions LLC, for which Benjamin is a managing member.
Benjamin and his realty firm in recent years have bought up hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate downtown — including major class A office towers — becoming the center city’s most dominant landlord. Shelbourne Global is also leading a $100-million redevelopment of Pratt Street.
Shelbourne’s most recent major deal was purchasing for $4.3 million the former Fuller Brush Company property in the north end at 3580 Main St., which it hopes to upgrade to a better office/flex/warehouse space.