All quiet on the western front

In completing the $8.4 million purchase of a long idle lab on Danbury’s west side to serve as its main U.S. office, Belimo Air Controls has largely escaped attention despite vowing to add as many employees as other company expansions touted by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

Belimo has vowed to double the size of its local workforce to 500 people over several years, a growth trajectory that matches that of Dollar Tree’s planned distribution facility in Windsor and Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s New Haven headquarters relocation. Among other significant deals in Fairfield County in the past year, Malloy’s office has similarly been mum on expansions involving Bridgewater Associates in Wilton, Pepperidge Farm in Norwalk, and Stamford Hospital – despite the deals all reinforcing his oft-repeated, rookie-term mantra that “Connecticut is open for business.”

In Danbury, Belimo plans to raze existing structures at 33 Turner Road and build a new $40 million, 200,000-square-foot, energy-efficient facility. The company initially sparked protest from neighborhood residents concerned about trucks during construction and afterward.

Danbury, whose mayor, Mark Boughton, ran for lieutenant governor alongside Malloy-opponent Tom Foley, awarded Belimo a seven-year tax-assessment deferral. Belimo and the city have not revealed any incentives from the state factoring into the company’s plans.

With a 2010 assessed grand list value of $4.5 million, the property is embedded in a residential neighborhood close by the New York state border, and was last used by Novo Nordisk AS, which moved its Danbury operations in 1995 to North Carolina.

Belimo’s damper actuators and valves control building heating and cooling systems, with the company having produced more than 50 million actuators since its 1975 launch. Sales in the Americas totaled $148 million in 2011.

The company established its Danbury operations in 1997 and has been located at 43 Old Ridgebury Road in Danbury, near the headquarters for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. (itself back in hiring mode after having laid off workers last year) and Praxair Inc., among others.

Despite a small multitude of empty or near-empty office buildings pushing up Fairfield County’s overall vacancy rate, owners have shown no public inclination to sell in a down market, according to multiple brokerage companies. In the second quarter, Fairfield County investment sales activity was moderate, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate broker with an office in Stamford, with three other significant transactions, compared to five in the first quarter.

The most significant deal was Torchlight Investors taking possession of the former UST headquarters at 100 W. Putnam Ave. in Greenwich, after Antares Investment Partners bought the property for $130 million.

“Although there were fewer sales this quarter, there are several significant transactions in the pipeline for sale by year end,” said Jim Fagan, senior managing director of Cushman & Wakefield, in a written statement. “We fully expect interest rates to remain exceptionally low and as a result, 2012 will develop into an active year for the investment sales market.”