In an off-the-beaten-trail pocket of Stamford, a small array of satellite dishes is trained at the sky.
For Encompass Digital Media L.L.C., they may as well be gold-plated dishes.
In December, Los Angeles-based Encompass Digital Media L.L.C. quietly completed a pair of mortgages valued at $290 million and secured by property at Glenbrook Industrial Park in Stamford, with the contract running through 2017.
It was an eye-popping figure, given the facility”™s industrial appearance. By comparison, the conversion of  the former Clairol property into a gleaming new NBC Sports Group television studio and adjacent Chelsea Piers entertainment complex is expected to cost in the range of $200 million, according to one of the site”™s developers.
At a Norwalk studio operated by that same development team, meanwhile, a new building is on the books to be constructed at a cost of $650,000, after World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. secured the site as a production office. WWE is in the process of launching a cable TV network with no details yet on a launch date.
Encompass Digital Media CFO Brian Stewart did not respond to a message left by the Fairfield County Business Journal on his voicemail. Days later, Bloomberg News reported that Encompass is seeking $280 million in loans to back a buyout by Court Square Capital Partners L.P., which is acquiring Encompass from Wasserstein & Co., with Bloomberg News citing a single source it did not identify.
The Court Square acquisition was announced only in December, and given Encompass Digital Media filing related mortgage documents last spring on its Stamford property, it was not immediately apparent whether the twin financing deals are related.
Court Square also owns Fibertech Networks, a Rochester, N.Y.-based company that owns a fiber optic communications network totaling 195 route miles in Fairfield County, with Fibertech also running a networking facility at 1351 Washington Blvd. in Stamford.
Encompass acquired the satellite dish farm last February from Ascent Media, along with facilities in New York City, Burbank, Calif., and Minneapolis. The Stamford facility”™s ownership dates back to the early 1980s and Westinghouse Broadcasting.
Encompass clients include Bristol-based ESPN and NBC Universal and its NBC Sports division, which is building the major studio in Stamford.
Encompass also runs a small studio at 250 Harbor Drive in Stamford used by A&E, Lifetime and
YES Network. On its website, it lists at 110,000 square feet the size of its Stamford plant.
Fairfield County has played a significant role in the maturation of the satellite communications industry, given its status as the onetime home of PanAmSat Corp. in Greenwich which operated a satellite fleet before merging into Intelsat Corp. in 2006. Intelsat relocated its own headquarters from Wilton to an intersection of Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C.
In Danbury, Goodrich Corp. employs some 500 people who help develop and build high-end optical equipment for satellites used by U.S. government agencies.
