NORWALK – While Stamford and Westport absorbed some office space in the last six months, Norwalk and Greenwich struggled, according to Choyce Peterson’s 30th semi-annual Lower Fairfield County Office Market Survey.
The commercial real estate brokerage firm’s survey depicts silhouettes of 94 buildings with a total inventory of 17.2 million square feet and tracks changes in office space availability from year-end 2023 to year-end 2024 in larger, primarily multi-tenanted Class A office buildings in Stamford, Norwalk, Greenwich, and Westport.
The survey shows there was a 0.4 percentage point increase in total availability from 29.3% at the end of 2023 to 29.7% at the end of 2024. Of the 5,092,938 square feet of available space at year-end 2024, 88.6% is available on a direct basis while 11.4% is sublease space.
“Although the overall availability rate remained static for 2024, behind the scenes we’ve witnessed a substantial shift in the marketplace,” said John P. Hannigan, co-founder and a principal at Choyce Peterson.
“For the past few years, we’ve been anticipating that several office buildings will be converted to other uses. We’ve been waiting for these owners to either sell or obtain approvals for adaptive re-use such as multi-family residential, senior living, health and fitness/recreation.”
As a result, Hannigan said, during the last year more than 1 million square feet of Class A office space was removed from the survey.
- Stamford decreased from 30.8% to 30.5%. Of the 30 buildings surveyed, 10 experienced a decrease in available square footage, 15 had an increase and five were unchanged. The largest absorption of space was at 695 E. Main Street, 400 Atlantic St. and 300 First Stamford Place for a combined total of 218,217 square feet of leased space. The majority of overall increase in space was in one building: 6 High Ridge Park with 125,205 square feet of additional available space.
- Norwalk increased from 42.4% to 44.3%. Of the 18 buildings surveyed, eight experienced a decrease in available square footage, eight had an increase and two were unchanged. Almost 75% of the decrease in space came from three buildings: 45 Glover Ave., 383 Main Ave. and 401 Merritt 7 for a total of 206,372 square feet. The vast majority of the increase in available space was at 901 Main St. for a total of 228,084 square feet. None of the 18 buildings surveyed are at full capacity, and six buildings each have more than 100,000 square feet of available space. Although Norwalk has the highest availability rate, remarkably it has the lowest portion of available sublease space (4.6%) out of the four markets surveyed.
- Greenwich increased from 13.8% to 15.0%. Of the 25 buildings surveyed, five experienced a decrease in available square footage, 10 had an increase and 10 were unchanged. 411 W Putnam Ave., 55 Railroad Ave. and 2 Greenwich Office Park combined leased 66,564 square feet of available space. 33 Benedict Place, 5 Greenwich Office Park and 500 W. Putnam Ave. combined added 68,230 square feet of available space. Currently, nine of the 25 buildings surveyed have no space available, and only six have more than 25,000 square feet available.
- Westport decreased from 14.1% to 12.2%. Of the 21 buildings surveyed, four experienced a decrease in available square footage, two had an increase and 15 were unchanged. Over 16,708 square feet combined was leased at 1 Glendinning Plaza, 57 Greens Farms Road and 8 Wright St. The only added space was at 33 Riverside and 274 Riverside Ave. for a total of 2,722 square feet. Not surprisingly, 12 of the 21 buildings surveyed have no space available, and only three have more than 20,000 square feet available. Westport is the only submarket that has more sublease space available than direct space.
