‘Competitive again’
It is a job that starts with Mayor Mike Pavia, extends to people like Chris Bruhl, head of the Business Council of Fairfield County, and Jack Condlin, president and CEO of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce, and from there right on down the line to people like you.
It”™s the job of selling Stamford, “The City that Works” ”“ and by extension Fairfield County. And thanks to a Darien man with billions of dollars to spend in any way he sees fit, the consensus is the area just got a lot easier to sell to companies considering where to situate their offices.
If Bridgewater Associates”™ planned Stamford headquarters becomes an architectural and economic jewel as promised by founder Ray Dalio and his lieutenants, it cannot happen soon enough for a city with a persistent office vacancy rate exceeding 20 percent.
Rather than taking space at an existing building ”“ with Building and Land Technology”™s BLT Financial Centre a prime candidate with more than 600,000 square feet of available space in one of Stamford”™s finest facilities ”“ Bridgewater opted to go into the building business with BLT, envisioning a low-slung waterside building employing the latest green design principles.
Jack Condlin, the president of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce, sees the project as a pinnacle in Stamford”™s evolution dating back to the 1970s, when F.D. Rich Co. built a lengthy billboard for the city in a series of office buildings running along Interstate 95 that helped draw a small group of Fortune 500 companies to Stamford. In quick succession, the city would add the hulking Harbor Plaza and the glassy First Stamford Place, followed by a lull in major new construction until BLT wrested development duties from Antares Investment Partners with backing from Philadelphia financier Lubert-Adler.
Taking in the new residential mid-rises and offices in mid-August at Harbor Point, Condlin said he thinks the Bridgewater Associates project cements Stamford”™s status as a major economic center in the Northeast ”“ if not on the scale of New York City and Boston, certainly at the top of the list of the mid-sized cities that surround those two metropolises. And it is hard to argue the point. Despite high costs of doing business, an aging population and corporate exoduses that have included the likes of International Paper, MeadWestvaco, and Time Warner Cable, Stamford continues to find favor with corporations willing to take their place ”“ whether in the form of Royal Bank of Scotland, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. or NBC Sports Group, to name a few.
With Bridgewater giving the city another major hedge fund in addition to SAC Capital Advisors, Condlin and others hope that others will follow ”“ and that those companies will spin out startups in finance, information technology or other sectors as the economy gains steam.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has witnessed the city”™s arc in most of a lifetime here as a boy and later mayor, likewise sees the Bridgewater deal as only the latest in a series of peaks for Stamford and by extension the state, with more to come.
“It”™s still going to take time to turn what was 22 years of defeat into a victory,” Malloy said. “But Connecticut is competitive again.”