As Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez’s corruption trial progressed yesterday there was some semi good news coming out of downtown: Bank of America had signed a new lease at CityPlace. Within one year the bank’s Connecticut headquarters will move out of the iconic 777 Main Street building that bears its logo into a smaller space inside CityPlace.
Currently Bank of America leases about 200,000 square feet of space according to the Courant and 210,000 square feet of space according to the Hartford Business Journal (HBJ) at 777 Main. This is about half the space in the building. After the move the bank will occupy 100,000 square feet of space according to Courant and 60,000 square feet of space according to the HBJ inside CityPlace I and II. Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch already has space inside City Place II.
According to a bank spokesperson the move will not result in any net job loss which is great news for the city. A limited number of positions will be moved to other Bank of America facilities.
This move is a big win for CityPlace which recently signed a lease with UnitedHealth Group to move 2,300 employees from the Connecticut River Plaza on Columbus Blvd. and invest $35 million in renovations. More importantly this is 2,300 employees who will remain working in Hartford.
The down side is that Bank of America was not able to negotiate a new lease with Michael Grunberg of Grunberg Realty which owns 777 Main. The bank’s lease expires in March, 2011 and the two parties could not agree on new terms. The bank used to own the building but Grunberg bought it in 2006 and currently leases space there. There was a time I believe that Grunberg had planned to convert part of the building into condominiums or apartments.
777 Main has a Bank of America branch on the ground level and City Place has a branch on its ground level. There is no word yet on what will happen to the branch locations.
Once the bank vacates 777 Main Street the building will be almost entirely vacant. The building constructed in 1967 was once fully occupied. If we look at the rest of downtown it is somewhat of a bleak picture at the moment. The Connecticut River Plaza will soon be mostly vacant and on the auction block as UnitedHelath Group moves out. Goodwin Square’s loan is in default. Metro Center and CityPlace II are in foreclosure. Bushnell Regency the majority condo owner in Bushnell on the Park has filed for bankruptcy. All of this is not good news. Unfortunately I feel it will take Hartford much longer to get through this recession then the rest of the state and the nation as it took us longer to start feeling it.
While Bank of America is cutting the space it occupies downtown which will increase the CBD vacancy rate there will be no net job losses which is good and the bank is not moving their Connecticut headquarters to the suburbs which is very good. Through signing a lease downtown the bank has continued to show their commitment to downtown and I applaud them for this. Hopefully one day downtown will be so attractive to the bank that they will want to move more of their operations from the suburbs to the city.
Sources:
Gosselin, Kenneth R. Bank of America’s Corporate Offices Moving To CityPlace In Hartford. Hartford Courant. 13 April, 2010.
Bordanaro, Greg. Bank of America moving to CityPlace. Hartford Business Journal. 12 April, 2010
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