Make a last-minute cancellation at Four Points by Sheraton Norwalk, and the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. affiliate will levy a charge for a single night”™s stay.
Apparently, there is little penalty if Starwood wished to cancel plans to relocate its headquarters to Stamford.
Nearly three weeks after Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. would accept nearly $100 million in incentives to relocate its headquarters to Stamford from White Plains, N.Y., Starwood had yet to issue its own press release or notice to investors of plans to relocate.
In the governor”™s release, Starwood CEO Frits van Paasschen lauded the incentives and site that are luring Starwood across the border, and Starwood”™s general counsel Ken Siegel was quoted in the Stamford Advocate on Dec. 8 explaining the company”™s reasons for making a move.
“We’re bringing in a multimillion-dollar payroll into the state,” Siegel told the newspaper. “We think Stamford is a terrific place to be.”
Still, the lack of a formal company communication on Starwood”™s website or in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing has had at least a few locals wondering whether Starwood is keeping its options open to New York and Westchester County fluffing up a competing offer in a midnight bid to get Starwood to stay put.
Westchester County now has a new county executive in Republican Rob Astorino who hopes to make an immediate splash with constituents, and “the man who saved Starwood” would like nice on his political resume. New York has a chief executive in Gov. David Paterson trailing in the early polls for next year”™s reelection campaign, who could use support anywhere he can find it including in the business community.
New York officials have made no indication they are still engaging in talks with Starwood behind the scenes, and multiple sources contacted for this story said they could recall no instances in which a major company had reneged on a stated agreement to relocate to Fairfield County or Connecticut; or, for that matter, of a case in which a Connecticut company announced plans to leave only to be lured to stay by a last-ditch offer of incentives.
Rell spokesman Rich Harris gave no suggestion such a scenario could occur with Starwood.
“When we put (press releases) out, it”™s just about a done deal ”“ although not every ”˜i”™ has been dotted,” said Harris.
David Treadwell, a spokesman for the Connecticut Dept. of Economic and Community Development, said the state has “a framework for an agreement with Starwood in place,” in his words.
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“Both sides agree on the basic terms, but many of the final details still need to be ironed out,” Treadwell said. “I don”™t recall a business ever reversing its decision, especially not after informing its employees.”
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At deadline, a Starwood spokeswoman had yet to respond to a request for comment on whether the company would be willing to consider an overwhelming counteroffer from New York or another state; and whether any legal documents have been signed that would prevent it from doing so. The company”™s prospective landlord Building & Land Technology L.L.C. did not respond to a message left with Paul Kuehner, chief financial officer of BLT.
Starwood has allowed the record to stand on plans to lease 250,000 square feet of space at 333 Ludlow Street, also called Stamford Harbor Park, which totals nearly 425,000 square feet of space in two buildings, according to an online description on BLT”™s website.
As such, Starwood would share the South End complex with other tenants, which currently include Deloitte Inc. and Insight Express, the latter having taken a new lease according to a review of the Fairfield County commercial real estate market in the third quarter published by FirstService Williams.
Landing Starwood was a major coup for BLT, which stands to gain a long-term anchor tenant versus the uncertainty of many smaller tenants which can come and go more easily than a corporation requiring 250,000 square feet.
In 2007, 333 Ludlow Place was sold for some $130 million to Antares Investment Partners, Goldman Sachs and Lubert-Adler. Since then, BLT has taken over much of the oversight of the Harbor Point development of Stamford”™s South End initiated by Antares, without specifying details on its equity stake in the various properties.
BLT is also planning to build a hotel with more than 250,000 square feet of space at Harbor Point, without yet identifying what hotel brand will take the space. Earlier this fall, BLT said it had a tenant interested in a 250,000 square-foot building it has yet to construct in the South End, saying it needed speedy approval for the project to secure the tenant which it did not identify by name.
