Time to Roll Out the Welcome Mat to AETNA

Despite the recession the City of Hartford's welcome mats are getting a good work over this summer. During the August 14th weekend Northeast Utilities moved their corporate headquarters and 180 employees to downtown Hartford. Now the Hartford Business Journal is reporting that AETNA is weeks away from moving about 3,000 employees to their Hartford headquarters from Middletown. This is great news, something I have been very excited for since AETNA originally announced their consolidation plans. Usually change of any kind mixed with the private sector doesn't bring good news to Hartford. Change with MetLife, ING and WFSB landed them out of the city. ING's move of 2,000 workers out of Hartford to Windsor left room for AETNA to move most of their Middletown employees to Hartford.

After the move about 6,400 AETNA employees will work in Hartford, roughly double the number of current AETNA employees in the city. People who routinely pass by the AETNA campus will easily notice the changes the corporation has made to accommodate its new employees. A new 1,100 space parking garage has been built on Flower Street, adjacent to the Atrium, the building ING occupied that now AETNA occupies. The 1,400 space garage near the Rogers Building has been expanded and renovated.

There are about 1,000 AETNA workers who will start tele-commuting instead of being moved to Hartford. While, I would much rather see them move to Hartford I cannot complain because 1,000 jobs have not been cut or moved to the suburbs. (Ulitamtly I would like to see everyone commuting to AETNA by public transportation, if we really want to start talking about wish lists).

There is also a data center in Middletown with several hundred employees that will remain open.

The obvious loser here is the City of Middletown. While Hartford and Middletown are both cities I support this move because the AETNA Middletown campus was simply a suburban office park with a Middletown address. The AETNA Middletown campus was not located downtown and could easily have been picked up and moved to Windsor's Day Hill Road. The Middletown campus was located at 1000 Middle Street and was built in 1984 for $145 million and at one time housed 4,800 employees. Later GE acquired the building and AETNA kept the land underneath while leasing the building. AETNA's lease is up at the end of 2010.

It is unknown what will become of the building and I honestly don't care. There is speculation GE may buy the land (200 acres) from AETNA. What GE would do with it I am not sure. Either way I see this move, which is still in progress as amazing news for the entire City of Hartford. This is the kind of influx of workers Hartford needs to improve itself and slowly make up for the 4,000+ jobs lost by MetLife, ING and WFSB's move.