The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Norwalk’s former City Hall building on market for $2.5M
NORWALK — A building in the heart of South Norwalk that once served as City Hall is on the market for $2.5 million.
The listing price is slightly above its most recent appraisal in 2018 — years after the space was converted to boutique offices.
Constructed in 1912, 41 N. Main St. is owned by Fred F. French Investing, whose namesake realestate developer is best known for the Fred. F. French building in midtown Manhattan, designed in the Art Deco style with flourishes evoking Middle Eastern architecture.
Timon Malloy, president of Fred F. French Investing, said the firm intended to sell 41 N. Main St. to focus on modern office buildings like its 500 Post Road E. office building in Westport that once was the headquarters of the construction equipment manufacturer Terex, which is now based in Norwalk.
Helping to hasten that decision was the relocation of marketing design firm Zunda Group to a North Water Street building across from the Maritime Aquarium, Malloy said, giving the new owner more flexibility in marketing the space for new tenants. Among the remaining tenants is Mendola Artists, which provides business assistance to illustrators.
“It’s definitely a very cool building,” Malloy said Monday. “There are stone walls and exposed beams.”
After Norwalk City Hall relocated in 1988 to East Avenue, the North Main Street building eventually housed the Norwalk Museum for more than 15 years. The museum closed in 2013 with its archives and artifacts transferred to the Norwalk Public Library and Norwalk Historical Society.
Four years later, the operators of the defunct Stamford Innovation Center floated a proposal for a similar entrepreneurship center in the building, but were beat out for state funding by competing proposals in Stamford, New Haven, Hartford and New London.
South Norwalk has since undergone two major transformations — the 2019 opening of The SoNo Collection mall, bringing large numbers of shoppers to the neighborhood, and blocks of new apartments south of its Washington Street dining and retail district that have added hundreds of residents.
Malloy said he could envision the North Main Street building being converted to some type of recreational use or even loft apartments, but highlights its potential as an office building, with leases at $30 a square foot at last report.
Despite the 2020 arrival of Terex and other new leases, Norwalk’s office market has been lagging behind other Connecticut communities. The commercial brokerage firm Newmark recently calculated a 43 percent “availability” rate for Norwalk and Wilton.
“Activity is still dominated by existing tenants in a typical game of musical chairs,” Newmark stated in its third-quarter report on the Fairfield County office market. “The headwinds of work-from-home policies and tenants’ wait-and-see approach have only exacerbated occupancy concerns.”