New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Why is Conn. attracting so many N.Y. businesses?
On Tuesday, Philip Morris International announced that it would establish its headquarters in Connecticut and add 200 jobs as a result. The company’s relocation from New York City to its new Fairfield County destination will be complete by summer 2022. And the world’s largest tobacco company isn’t the only one set up shop in Connecticut.
Businesses both large and small have either relocated altogether or established additional locations in Connecticut. In April, the parent companies of Webster Bank and Sterling National Bank announced a merger and the creation of a new headquarters in Stamford. Digital Currency Group also landed in Fairfield County in 2021, taking space in the Shippan Landing complex in Stamford while maintaining its main offices in Manhattan.
On the small business front, Brazilian restaurant Ipanema left New York City for a new Norwalk location at the end of 2020 after being open in Manhattan for over 40 years. Owner Victor Pedro said that his new location in Norwalk “fit our vibe and our brand more than other places.”
And it’s not just New York City owners that like the “feel” of
Fairfield County; Westchester County, N.Y., is also sending business to Connecticut. Appetit Bistro and Alex’s Lounge III are two Westchester eateries that scooped up space on Washington Street in South Norwalk. And Mike Orefice, owner of Scarsdale, N.Y.-based Iron Vault gym is opening in Norwalk in mid-July. He said the area’s potential matches that of his brand.
“I think Washington Street and the whole [city] is super up and coming, very young, and kind of fits the same mold that we have at our brand,” he told Hearst Connecticut. “I think it was a perfect fit. The first time I went and saw it, I was blown away.”
So why is this happening so frequently lately? An organization called AdvanceCT could be one of the reasons.
Peter Denious, the president and CEO of AdvanceCT — a nonprofit that aims to retain and recruit businesses and improve Connecticut’s economic competitiveness — said that the organization is working in concert with the state to court companies into the state.
“We’re very actively pitching the Connecticut story to New York businesses and really businesses in some other metro markets that might be considering reconfiguring their urban footprint,” he said. “All of us are going through a complete reexamination of how we work and where we work — we’ve just been through this experiment in remote work and figured out we can actually be pretty productive.”
Taking a “sector approach” to pitching companies to come to Connecticut, Denious said AdvanceCT focuses on “five key clusters” of industries to bring into the state: insurance, financial services, life sciences, manufacturing and technology. They don’t do “random cold calling,” Denious said.
Instead, the organization tries to pitch companies that might already be thinking of relocating or are in one of those five key industries, Denious said. He works with the state Department of Economic Community Development, commissioner David Lehman and deputy commissioner Glendowlyn Thames to do so.
“If there’s some sort of linkage to
Connecticut or some reason why they may want to be in Connecticut or we have a relationship through our board or our members to a company…we’re proactively reaching out to those companies,” he said. “We’re comparing notes, we’re sharing pipeline [and] we’re figuring out ways in which we can originate some of these ideas and move processes along for companies that have expressed some interest.”
Jason Milligan, founder and broker of Milligan Realty in Norwalk, said he is already seeing movement in the retail and office properties he manages.
“I have seen strong interest from New York companies,” he said in an email. “There have been many inquiries for people that live in Fairfield County that commuted to work prior to the [COVID-19] pandemic, and there are also a high number of people that are looking to move from New York City to Connecticut and to bring their business with them or open a new business.”
Milligan noted that he has seen the most activity in Norwalk and said the features of the city have something to do with the increased interest in the area.
“It is conveniently located, has supply and the most affordable rents in the area,” he said. “It is home to many small, medium and some larger office buildings of all different classes.”
Having attractive accommodations isn’t exclusive to one city, according to Denious. Connecticut as a whole has features that Denious said are eyecatching to prospective companies looking to relocate, citing the state’s 42 colleges and universities that produce a “highly-educated workforce,” as well as quality of life considerations, such as school systems, health care and childcare.
“I think there’s a lot of thinking going on about employees and making sure they’re taken care of in this new world, particularly given that work from home is likely to be a component of the new normal,” he said.
Additionally, Denious cited Connecticut’s smaller cities for their accessibility and livability — especially when compared to New York City and Boston — as well as cost of office space.
“It’s $90 a square foot or more still in these dense urban environments, particularly New York,” he said. “We can be half that are well below half that — that counts for a lot.”
Also appealing to companies eyeing Connecticut are the organizations that are already here, according to Denious.
“Our sort of tagline is if it has to be done right and it’s a highly-valued, highly-engineered product, it belongs in Connecticut,” he said. “We’re making jet engines; we’re making nuclear submarines — those are highly complex, to say the least. So if it’s high quality, highly-engineered in advanced manufacturing, we’ve got a great ecosystem for that.”
Noting that Stanley Black and Decker is considering a shared innovation space for advanced manufacturing in Connecticut, Denious said other companies are also eyeing entry to Connecticut to establish other kinds of shared spaces: satellite offices.
“I think we have at least one company in our pipeline that I’d put in that bucket of pretty sizeable companies…that is a spinoff out of a large New York investment firm that has opened an office,” he said. “We’re talking to another company that’s not yet landed that fits that mold, too. Obviously, we have a lot of folks that work in Manhattan and live in Connecticut, and now these companies are saying, ‘Hey, maybe we should have a hub out there.’”
Milligan said he has already seen satellite offices popping up, noting changes in companies’ employee policies for the move.
“Most people are never going back to a full commute,” he said. “Companies have changed their policies. People can work from home or remotely.”
As companies continue to set up shop in Connecticut in the near future and beyond, Denious said these moves boil down to being able to recognize what the state has to offer.
“We have this reputation of being this kind of stodgy place where you know a lot of these big companies have their headquarters, but there’s nothing really innovative going on here and that’s just not right,” he said. “When you look at the facts — whether it’s technology or life sciences — I think the opportunity to come to a place like New Haven, in the case of life sciences and be a bigger fish in a smaller pond is really compelling and at half the cost than being in Cambridge outside of Boston.”