The new owners of Procter & Gamble Co.”™s Clairol plant in Stamford say in all likelihood they will reposition the property for multitenant use.
Cincinnati-based P&G sold the property in Stamford”™s Cove neighborhood to a consortium of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, Steven Wise Associates L.L.C., and the Connecticut Film Center.
According to the Stamford Advocate, the new owners spent under $17 million for the property, which includes 700,000 square feet of building space on 33 acres of land, fenced off from a residential neighborhood just south of Interstate 95.
Spinnaker Real Estate has been a lead developer of multiple projects in Fairfield County, including the District 95/7 mixed-use project in Norwalk that ground to a crawl during the credit crisis. That project recently received $6 million in bond support from the state, but CEO Clay Fowler said it has yet to land an anchor tenant, a key need to push forward with the main part of construction. More likely than not, Fowler added, that tenant will be a Fairfield County company looking to relocate into an upgraded facility to its current locale.
Fowler said Spinnaker had put in an inquiry on the property when Procter & Gamble first indicated its intentions to sell the Clairol property, but the collapse of the credit markets delayed the process. When Procter & Gamble again sought bidders, Spinnaker was ready with a new bid in conjunction with Steven Wise Associates and the Connecticut Film Center.
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“We just watched like everyone else over the past year,” Fowler said. “We never let go of our interest in acquiring the building.”
In 2005, Spinnaker paired with Wise, a Stamford native, to purchase 300 Stillwater Ave. in Stamford, which they sold last year to the Connecticut Film Center. CFC is now creating a film and digital media production facility at the site.
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Wise has also been involved with the construction of the Glenview House and Metropolitan Condominium residential developments in Stamford.
Fowler and Wise agreed that short of a major employer banging down the property”™s door to get sole tenancy, they would ink leases with multiple occupants for the building, which includes both office and industrial space.
The partners did not immediately specify potential lease rates for the building, except to say it would be competitively priced with the goal of bringing in tenants quickly.
“Look, we”™re realists and real operators,” Wise said. “We don”™t want it to sit there with the building empty. On the other hand, nobody knows when the real estate market is going to pick back up.”
Trip Hoffman, a broker with Cushman & Wakefield who represented Procter & Gamble in the buyer search, said the deal could be a harbinger of renewed movement in the commercial and industrial real estate markets, after few sales occurred in 2009.
“I”™m incredibly optimistic,” Hoffman said. “I”™ve seen the number of tenants looking at the market.”
Fowler, Wise and CFC similarly are betting on a return to a relative state of normalcy.
“There”™s real pain out there, but a lot of the pain from a business perspective is the uncertainty,” Wise said. “In the downturn we had in the early 1990s, no one knew how or when we would come out of it, but we did. You have to be prepared for when it does, and that was what this deal was about for us.”
