Stamford might be sprucing up rooms for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., with commercial real estate brokers speculating the hospitality giant is considering a waterside office building in the Connecticut city as a new headquarters.
Currently based at 1111 Westchester Ave. in White Plains, Starwood Hotels has long been rumored to be open to the possibility of relocating to Fairfield County if a suitable building came available, dating back to 1998 when it ultimately chose Westchester for its headquarters after coming east from Phoenix.
During the most recent market boom, the prospect of relocating has been next to impossible due to the lack of buildings that could accommodate Starwood Hotels, which at last report had more than 1,000 employees in White Plains. As companies continue downsizing, however, landlords have been able to cobble together larger blocks of space ”“ and even entire buildings ”“ to offer marquee tenants.
Brokers say that may be occurring at 333 Ludlow Ave. in Stamford, a trophy property in Stamford”™s South End whose current tenants include Deloitte Inc. Prospective tenants reportedly are being turned away, leading to speculation that the building could be reserved for Starwood Hotels ”“ or another large company.
At deadline, a Starwood spokesman had not immediately returned a call for comment.
Since 2006, when rumors last surfaced of a potential relocation of Starwood, Connecticut has added several tax-credit programs for companies adding jobs, which Stamford-based Gartner Inc. credited with its decision to add more than 300 jobs in Fairfield County over the next few years.
Connecticut also showed its willingness to break out the checkbook for specific companies ”“ it recently offered some $100 million in incentives to United Technologies Corp. to keep Pratt & Whitney facilities open in East Hartford and Cheshire. UTC spurned the incentives, saying it was not enough to make the aircraft-engine plants economically viable.
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Norwalk-based Building & Land Technology is leading a redevelopment of Stamford”™s South End, with the resulting Harbor Point project expected to result in several large new office buildings and more than 4,000 units of housing. BLT has yet to publish the identity of future corporate tenants or the company that will run multiple hotels approved for the site.
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StarwoodӪs hotel brands include Westin, Sheraton, Four Points and Le M̩ridien. In the second quarter, the company had a $134 million profit on $1.2 billion in revenue, the latter figure down 22 percent from a year earlier.
The company was able to increase profits by aggressively slashing its sales force by more than a third since the onset of the recession, but like other hotel companies faces an uncertain autumn and winter as swine flu fears have an as-yet undetermined impact on travel and convention attendance.
The company has also been signing deals for new hotels, however, and later this year plans to open a center in New York City to house all of its designers, spanning online graphics to architecture.
“Efforts to reduce costs have been pervasive throughout Starwood and reflect hard work and discipline from so many of our associates at our properties and at our corporate offices,” said Frits van Paasschen, CEO of Starwood Hotels, in a July conference call with investors. “Our cost-cutting exercises were rolled out with care to ensure that we do not sacrifice future growth.”
A resident of Greenwich, van Paasschen has run Starwood Hotels the past two years. Previously, the Amherst College and Harvard Business School graduate was CEO of Molson Coors Brewing Co.
Starwood Hotels has another tangential connection to Greenwich in Starwood Capital Group, which founder Barry Sterlicht runs. It recently led the purchase of more than $4.5 billion in real estate assets nationwide from the failed Corus Bank.
