Khouloud Al Mannai knows there is one thing that can leave an unshakable first — and lasting impression — on any city.
Parking.
“If you come to Hartford and you don’t remember the parking — that it was such a good experience because it was insignificant and so little challenge — then it’s the event that is top of mind and not the parking,” Al Mannai, the new chief of the Hartford Parking Authority, said.
The appointment of Al Mannai comes as businesses in the downtown area see the cost and ease of access to parking as an obstacle in consistently attracting visitors who are considered essential to rebuilding the vibrancy of downtown.
The city-owned MAT Garage — with its entrances on Church and South Chapel streets — could play a more crucial role and will soon see $4.7 million in repairs, beginning as soon as this summer.
Al Mannai said she is focused on the authority’s traditional role of collecting revenue for city coffers, but she also has a broader vision of how parking can play a role in the city’s future economic development.
Al Mannai, who goes by the nickname “Kay,” has honed her vision since joining the authority in 2024, rising to chief financial officer and becoming interim CEO last fall.
As she takes the reins of the quasi-public agency, Al Mannai said a top priority is tackling much-needed renovations to the MAT Garage, which has suffered from deferred maintenance. The 950-plus space, 5-level garage is connected structurally to both 20 Church Street — the “Stilts” Building — and the Hartford Stage Co.
Al Mannai said she believes it essential that the city hold on to the MAT Garage, despite it eventually needing total repairs of $55 million, by one estimate. The garage, Al Mannai said, is already playing a role in revitalization.
“It’s one of the last garages that the city owns, but on top of that it’s a whole city block right downtown,” Al Mannai said. “So, you know, its key for the small businesses on Pratt Street. We constantly do events for them, or we’ll waive parking because we own it.”
Since 2010, the city sold two downtown parking garages — Morgan Street and Church Street — to the state for a total of nearly $40 million, the latter needing significant repairs. The sales came as the city was grappling with significant financial problems that eventually left it teetering on bankruptcy. In 2018, the state agreed to pay off $550 million of Hartford’s debt over 20 years.
The authority draws praise from downtown merchants for its efforts so far.
“Parking has always been such a hot conversation,” Rory Gale, longtime owner of the Hartford Prints! gift shop on Pratt, said. “I am hoping to get to a place where parking just feels so easy, so accessible, so affordable and that we are not seen as this place where you can’t find a parking spot or the parking out there is just so expensive.”
The city has invested $9 million in its Hart Lift storefront revitalization program, concentrating those efforts in and around Pratt Street. Those efforts have led to the opening or expansion of shops, restaurants and bars, with plans in the works for more.
The MAT garage — its name an acronym for Main and Trumbull, the two streets between which the garage spans — could play another key role in reshaping downtown’s image, Gale said.
“Using this city-owned asset, having the MAT Garage be that very visible, welcoming, gateway to Hartford,” Gale said.
In the downtown area, the parking authority controls 2,380 off-street parking spaces, including the MAT Garage, lots near Dunkin’ Park and at the main branch of the library. In addition, the authority oversees 1,800 on the street that are free after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturdays and Sunday.
“The Hartford Parking Authority is in a unique position to really make Hartford parking friendly in a way that we have never been before,” Gale said.
One option also could be a flat, $5 fee at the MAT Garage evenings and on weekends, Gale said.
‘Backbone of economic development’
Al Mannai brings a background in finance to her new post. She worked as a financial consultant, including at a firm advising on mergers and acquisitions. Some of her career was in Philadelphia, in the same state where she spent part of her childhood.
Al Mannai said she never expected her career to take a turn into parking management.
“There’s no school you go to for, like, ‘Oh, I want to be a parking professional,” Al Mannai said. “But as I got in here, I’m like, ‘This is interesting.’ We’re a revenue generator for the city. That’s pretty cool. But we are the backbone of economic development and the first and last impression for residents and people visiting.”
In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, parking revenue collected by the authority totaled $1.9 million, and is projected to remain relatively flat in the current fiscal year, according to financials provided by the authority.
Revenue from parking violations was $2.8 million in fiscal 2025, also projected to remain essentially flat in the current fiscal year, the authority said.
Al Mannai said the one-size fits all approach to on-street parking now may need to be reevaluated in a comprehensive way.
For example, Al Mannai recently worked with city officials to change the regulations along the south side of the block at the corner of Asylum and Main streets. A blanket two-hour limit was broken up into smaller increments of time, the shortest 15 minutes, because businesses there told Al Mannai they needed more turnover in parking, partly to support their ‘grab-and-go’ customers.
“Maybe when they did this parking infrastructure and they put up signs a number of years ago, maybe there wasn’t Lyft and Uber, Uber Eats,” Al Mannai said. “So, this is partnering with small businesses.”
AI Mannai said partnerships with other businesses and organizations are vital and a recent situation illustrates why.
On January 24, a sellout crowd for the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball match-up with Villanova at PeoplesBank Arena combined with a show at Hartford Stage combined to fill up the MAT Garage well ahead of the beginning of the play. The MAT Garage is go-to parking for Hartford Stage because it is discounted from $10 for events to $7. Traffic became snarled in and around the Church Street entrance to the garage.
“Some people were confused, some had mobility challenges that made it really hard,” Al Mannai said. “So, I called up LAZ, and I said, “Hey, I need a shuttle.’ They said, ‘I’ll send you one in 15 minutes.’ ”
Hartford Stage agreed to hold back the start of its play, “The Cottage,” so ticketholders could get in their seats and see the show from the beginning.
“Having partnerships like that is the goal,” Al Mannai said.
Al Mannai said she would push for combining of parking apps, with Hartford’s Woonerf and West Hartford’s two, PassportParking and Flowbird, in mind.
The parking authority also is evaluating the potential for extending “grace periods” for metered, on-street parking beyond the 5 minutes that is now in place. Al Mannai said she already added a 5-minute grace period before the meter starts running to head-off a ticket if a motorist is off paying at a kiosk.
“It takes you more than 5 minutes sometimes to walk to a kiosk, maybe I get a phone call, maybe I haven’t downloaded the app,” Al Mannai said.
While still interim CEO, Al Mannai began navigating city politics, lobbying for $1.3 million in city funds for the first phase of renovations to the MAT garage, winning the support of Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and the city council. The balance will be financed by authority repair and renovation funds.
Al Mannai also dug into the request by Arulampalam to terminate a parking contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel.
The contract provided “visitor” parking on a city-owned lot behind the Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building and Courthouse on Main Street, where ICE has a field office.
“The city of Hartford does not deem ICE personnel to be authorized as visitors of the city of Hartford,” Arulampalam wrote in a Jan. 27 letter to Al Mannai.
Al Mannai said the details of the termination are still being worked out.
The ‘red carpet’ treatment
The first phase of renovations at the MAT Garage was split in two because costs had risen significantly from earlier estimates, coming to about $9 million. The first part, at $4.7 million and beginning this summer, will tackle to deteriorating rooftop parking level. Water from rain and melting snow is penetrating the concrete, leaking to the floor below. Damage to one stairwell connecting the two floors is so severe that it was closed to use more than a year ago.
Because the garage was built in the 1980s, concrete was poured rather than delivered in pre-cast sections as its common today, making repairs far more expensive, Al Mannai said.
“The repairs have to be done here and they can’t piece it out,” Al Mannai said. “And the garage is attached to the infrastructure of the Stilts and Hartford Stage.”
The second half of the first phase is estimated to cost $4.3 million and will focus on the floor below where there is the most vehicle traffic entering and exiting. There is no timetable for this work because funds must be lined up. Eventually, all levels of the garage will need repairs, Al Mannai said.
While the big-ticket improvements can capture the most attention, Al Mannai said more modest upgrades at the MAT Garage can improve visitor impression.
When it was determined the lobby that opens to Trumbull Street needed a new floor, the authority added fresh paint and an outsized map — in collaboration with the Hartford Business Improvement District. The map includes QR codes for 33 destinations in the downtown area, from the Ancient Burying Ground and “Stegosaurus,” the sculpture by Alexander Calder between The Wadsworth and City Hall, to the Bushnell Park Carousel and Mortensen Riverfront Plaza.
“PeoplesBank Arena is right there,” Al Mannai said, in recent tour of the garage. “So a lot of people come through here — come, stay, do an extra thing. It orients them to where they are approximate to the garage. Because, if you don’t know and you come park here, how do you know Pratt Street is a block away? We know that, but not everyone does.”
Al Mannai’s has next set her sights on a drab walkway running from the first floor to a door near the entrance of Hartford Stage, a partnership with the performing arts theater. There will be stanchions possibly with velvet ropes with framed theater posters on the wall.
And on the floor? What else: a red carpet.
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected].