The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Future HQ of Charter rises
STAMFORD — A year ago, a few pilings marked the future downtown home of the city’s sole Fortune 100 company. Today, 15 glasssheathed floors tower over the neighborhood.
Telecommunications giant Charter Communications confirmed this week it plans to move in the first half of 2021 into the approximately 500,000squarefoot building that has taken shape at 406 Washington Blvd., next to the city’s main MetroNorth Railroad station. While the project attests to the company’s growth and cements Stamford’s standing as the state’s leading corporate hub, it has also cast uncertainty over the future of Charter’s current address.
“We are excited to be continuing our growth in Stamford and look forward to the opening of our new headquarters,” Charter said in a statement. “Today, we are expanding in our current locations and will continue to evaluate our space needs for the future.”
Moving the main offices
While Stamford has seen a proliferation of residential development in the past decade, 406 Washington represents one of a handful of new office buildings to have risen during that span.
Only the 450,000squarefoot tower down the street, at 600 Washington Blvd. — which houses local hubs for Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Citizens Bank and Bank of America — rivals the scope of 406 Washington among office buildings constructed in the city in the past 15 years.
The lack of recent office construction reflects a market still recovering from the last recession. Citywide vacancy rates are still hovering around 30 percent, according to several commercial real estate firms.
But Charter’s burgeoning presence at its current downtown home, at 400 Atlantic St., convinced the company it needed a new building.
It announced the relocation in October 2017, with a multmilliondollar package of state subsidies supporting the project.
Since 2012 headquarters relocation from St. Louis, Charter has expanded from one floor to nine levels, in the approximately 500,000squarefoot building at 400 Atlantic.
It leases about 300,000 square feet there, according to some local commercial Realtors’ measures.
Fueling its expansion into one of the country’s largest cableandinternet providers, it acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for about $65 billion in 2016.
For the second quarter of 2019, the company’s revenues increased 4.5 percent year over year, to $11.3 billion.
Today, the No. 70 company on this year’s Fortune 500 list employs employs about 1,300 in the city. Tenantlandlord tensions
Charter’s pending relocation has complicated relations between the company and its landlord at 400 Atlantic.
In late 2017, Charter acquired 400 Atlantic’s loan for $100 million, representing about 40 percent of the $265 million principal originated in 2007.
Officials at The Landis Group — the owner and manager of 400 Atlantic and also the loan’s borrower, through an affiliated subsidiary group — saw the purchase of the note as undermining leasing talks between the two parties.
“It’s extremely unusual, to put it mildly, for a mortgage lender to sell a mortgage loan to the major tenant of the building,” Stephen Meister, an attorney for Landis and partner of the Manhattan law firm Meister Seelig & Fein, said in November 2017. “It’s particularly unusual — and, frankly, I think improper — when the lender knows that that sale is taking place
during sensitive negotiations between the landlord and the tenant.”
Landis had contemplated legal action against Charter, according to Meister.
Messages left in the past week for Landis and Meister were not returned.
Meanwhile, city officials said they would be ready for Charter’s move. Charter also leases around 50,000 square feet at the adjacent 201 Tresser Blvd.
“The building (at 400 Atlantic) will not be available to the market for another 24 to 36 months as Charter transitions to their new building,” Madden said. “We will start talking to companies next year about the property, as it is approximately 18 months for most companies to make a decision when they are looking to move or expand.” Ready for change
While the building at 406 Washington sports a complete shell, Charter has scheduled its movein for the first half of 2021 because the new structure’s interior still needs to be built out.
Alongside that edifice, Charter secured the city zoning board’s approval in April for a second building at 406 Washington that would raise the property’s total footprint to about 777,000 square feet.
“We are still working on the details for the second building at 406 Washington and look forward to having more information to share at a later time,” Charter said in the statement.
An exemplar for a postCharter era at 400 Atlantic could be the neighboring office complex at 677 Washington Blvd.
The approximately 700,000squarefoot property had languished as the city’s largest office vacancy following the 2016 relocation of UBS’ local offices to 600 Washington. Today, it has leased more than 70 percent of its space.
At the end of May, professionalservices firm KPMG opened its new Stamford offices there, taking about 40,000 square feet.
In March, WWE announced it would relocate its headquarters to the same site and take 415,000 square feet.
Architectural firm Perkins Eastman moved into groundfloor offices last October.
Gov. Ned Lamont visited the new KPMG offices in July, and he again touted Stamford’s corporate growth, in a speech Thursday to the city’s Chamber of Commerce.
“I love seeing those cranes, I love seeing Charter (grow),” Lamont said. “It gives you an idea of how change can be good as we move forward. And that’s what we’re trying to do around the state.”