Charter eyes 2021 for move of headquarters
STAMFORD — Three years ago, Charter Communications announced it would relocate its headquarters within the city. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, that plan still stands.
The telecommunications giant confirmed this week that it would start early next year to move in to a new 500,000-square-foot building at 406 Washington Blvd., next to the downtown Metro-North Railroad station.
While the glass-sheathed exterior of the 15-floor building was largely completed by last year, Charter scheduled its move-in for next year because the interior needed to be built out.
Next to that edifice, construction of a second building is also underway at 406 Washington. In total, the two structures would cover about 777,000 square feet.
Charter plans to move into “Building 2” in early 2022.
“The new state-of-the-art, (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver-compliant facilities will provide Charter’s Stamford based-employees and visiting employees from across the country the resources they need to support the company’s continued growth and overall success,” Charter said in a statement.
Charter announced in October 2017 that it planned to relocate from its current downtown headquarters at 400 Atlantic St. A multimillion-dollar package of state subsidies is supporting the project.
At 406 Washington, Charter will take over the Gateway Harbor Point site developed by Building and Land Technology, which is also the developer of the neighboring Harbor Point mixed-use complex and owner of a number of other major office properties in the city.
“It has been a pleasure working with Charter over the last several years to develop their new corporate headquarters at Gateway Harbor Point,” said BLT Co-President Ted Ferrarone. “We look forward to continuing the relationship and wish the team success in their newly designed space.”
Since its 2012 headquarters relocation from St. Louis, Charter has steadily grown its footprint in the approximately 500,000square-foot building at 400 Atlantic. It leases about 300,000 square feet there, according to some commercial Realtors’ estimates.
The No. 71 company on this year’s Fortune 500 list also leases more than 50,000 square feet in the adjacent building at 201 Tresser Blvd.
It has continued to grow its customer base during the pandemic. Charter’s combined number of residential customers and business customers totaled 30.5 million in the second quarter, up 6 percent from last year.
In total, the company employs about 1,300 in the city and more than 95,000 nationwide.
“We are currently working through our move logistics and relocation plans,” the company said. “We will be communicating more about those plans to our Stamford employees in the coming months.”
Charter bucked the corporate trend of vacating offices during the first few months of the pandemic by keeping open its headquarters and other locations.
The policy ups many employees who were worried that continuing to work in their offices would put
them at risk of contracting COVID-19.
The company said it is committed to protecting workers’ health and safety. In response to the misgivings about the office policies, the firm made a number of concessions that included giving employees additional paid time off and more options for working remotely.