New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Don’t let bad money habits derail relationships
Agents look for signs of N.Y. firms relocating to Connecticut
It was the latest example of the flagging office-space market in Connecticut — Diageo in February debuting its new U.S. headquarters in lower Manhattan, relocating from its former base in Norwalk.
The liquor giant’s remaining presence in Fairfield County was relegated to a bit of satellite space reserved in Stamford.
A few short weeks later, the company was donating thousands of barrels of alcohol for the production of hand sanitizer in the fight against the spread of the coronavirus — and that Stamford space suddenly looked very appealing to a lot of Connecticut employees leery of boarding trains into New York City.
Some of the recent criticisms that have dulled the shine of Fairfield County as an office locale — distance from Manhattan, comparative vitality for employees, airport proximity — have been undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic, as workers have shifted to home offices and employers grapple with the longterm implications of providing safe working environments, from the commute to the cubicle.
Connecticut real estate agents already are fielding a spike in bids for suburban Connecticut homes from affluent New York City denizens who suddenly are wary of close confines. Their commercial counterparts hope they will see the same from corporate employers looking to establish office outposts
— or their entire headquarters — in Fairfield County.
Several New York City financial firms are taking a hard look at the 600 Washington Boulevard building purchased last year by Rubenstein Partners, the company confirmed in a Bloomberg report this week.
“The things that go into the decision are going to be, ‘How badly affected am I going to be by this coronavirus, from a strategic perspective? Am I losing people? Am I losing productivity?’ ” said said Jim Fagan, executive managing director in the Stamford office of Cushman and Wakefield of Connecticut. “I don’t think this pandemic will be here in two years — I think it will be in our rear view mirror . ... But it’s going to be a new world, and I don’t think it’s going back to anything that we’ve seen. I think there’s going to be a lot of changes.”
Hedging against one locale
Many Fairfield County offices that were built in the heyday of suburban campuses — starting in the 1970s — have languished in the past decade. Some of the properties
There are many good reasons to get your finances in order, and if you are single you can add another one: Many potential mates will be turned off by a low credit score, high debt or other financial problems.
Fifty percent of women and 35 percent of men would think twice about dating someone with a low credit score, according to a survey by Bankrate.com, https://bit.ly/3gcvW0f.
Respondents pointed out that poor credit may indicate a lack of responsibility. Since money issues are a leading cause of divorce, many people are wary of taking on the stress caused by a partner’s inability to manage money.
A study by the Federal Reserve Board (https:// bit.ly/2TttEQG) reached similar conclusions. Singles with low credit scores are 30 percent less likely to form a committed relationship in any given year, compared with singles with high credit scores, the study revealed. The Fed study also showed that couples are more likely to separate when one partner has a low credit score, with the odds increasing the lower the score.
Debt is another dealbreaker: 40 percent of Americans said they would
have been redeveloped after owners struck out repeatedly in drawing interest from new companies to move in.
Locally, the most prominent example is the former General Electric headquarters in Fairfield, purchased for an auxiliary campus by Sacred Heart University. The former Xerox headquarters on Long Ridge Road in Stamford has been considered for school property, and the onetime Oxford Health facility in Trumbull was acquired for redevelopment into a senior living community.
As of the first quarter, Fairfield County had 10.7 million square feet of available
office space as tracked by Cushman & Wakefield, with vacancy rates running above 30 percent in Stamford, Norwalk and Danbury. By comparison, Manhattan offices had a vacancy rate of 11 percent as of March, with just three of the 20 submarkets having office vacancies above 15 percent.
But multiple New York City office owners have noted the impact the pandemic has had on their tenant bases, including SL Green Realty whose holdings include Stamford’s big Landmark Square complex and 1055 Washington Boulevard nearby.
“As a result of COVID, there’s a consistent message that we’re getting back from tenants that ... they’re going to redesign spaces, they’re going to allocate
more square footage in order to provide distancing between employees,” said SL Green CEO Marc Holliday, during an April conference call. “Does that mean that tenants actually end up taking more space in the long run? Maybe yes, maybe no. It will probably be offset by some tenants that ... split their operations for diversity, so I think the story still needs to be written. But clearly, the phenomenon of ‘densification’ — that’s gone.”
Earlier this month, the CEO of office owner MackCali noted that Citi elected to hang onto some 300,000 square feet of space in Jersey City that it had planned to sublease to other tenants.
“(Citi) said, ‘Look, we may need this,’” said Mack Cali CEO Michael DeMarco. “Sometimes it’s going to
be driven by the business unit head [who] said, ‘Hey ... going into New York isn’t going to work for us short term, maybe we can take a group out.’ And it’s threeto-seven-year deals.”
‘That thought has probably gone away’
Two big factors working in favor of the suburbs are cheaper lease rates to allow companies to spread out desks, and a newfound wariness of trains and elevators as possible petri dishes for the virus.
About six in 10 employers plan to let workers who use public transportation continue to work from home until they have complete assurance that trains and buses are safe from any coronavirus infection, according to a survey of more than 400 businesses nationally
conducted during the second week of May by Norwalk-based OperationsInc.
Could contagion concerns go so far as to push corner offices out to the suburbs, with Manhattan offices becoming satellites for workers who choose to remain in the city or need access to Wall Street or major airports?
Fagan said he has yet to see any evidence that the suburban spokes will become the hubs themselves — but predicts more companies will establish offices in Connecticut, if for lesser amounts of space initially as managers wait and see how worker attitudes evolve as vaccines and therapies reach the masses. Next door to the former Diageo building in Norwalk, FactSet has chosen to
keep its new headquarters empty for the duration of 2020, with its staff of more than 900 working remotely until next January.
“Companies will ... give their employees the ability to pick and choose how and where they want to work,” Fagan said. “The millennial generation is the largest workforce in our history so far ... and they are in their family formation prime — finally — that they have put off for a long time. I think that there was a notion, ‘You know, maybe we just stay in New York.’ I think that thought has probably gone away, if I had to guess.”