NewHavenBIZ

26 n e w h a v e n B I Z | J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m F O C U S | R e a l E s t a t e & D e v e l o p m e n t Bringing it all back home By Natalie Missakian A ccel International had been looking across Connecticut and beyond for a space where it could expand its fast-growing steel wire manufacturing business. In the end, it chose to return to its roots. e Meriden-based supplier of high-performance conductors for aerospace, cable and other industries now plans to invest $40 million to convert the former Alexion Pharmaceuticals headquar- ters in Cheshire — the town where Accel got its start in 2002 — into a manufacturing facility. Accel paid $4.78 million for the property at 350 Knotter Dr., which had been vacant since the biotech powerhouse le Cheshire for a new building in downtown New Haven in 2016. Alexion, which was leasing the space from Massachu- setts-based commercial real-estate developer Winstanley Enterprises, has since moved its headquarters and roughly half of its Connecticut workforce to Boston. Steven Inglese, principal of the New Haven Group, the commercial real estate firm which represented Accel in the deal, says his client needed a building that housed at least 100,000 square feet. He knew the Alexion property had been on the market for some time, and he knew Winstanley's broker, David Barnes of CBRE/New England, who specializes in leasing and selling office properties along the I-91 corridor. So in May 2018, the pair arranged to show the build- ing to Inglese's client. Accel decided that the property fit the bill, and the deal closed Sept. 27. "What's interesting is the use of the property is changing dramati- cally. e user is doing a high-tech manufacturing process there and will not be using any of the lab space it was built out for," Inglese explains. Accel plans to gut much of the 175,000-square-foot building's interior to create open spaces for its high-end manufacturing lines, says Inglese. Situated on 75 acres in an industrial park near I-691, the building also has potential for ex- pansion of at least another 200,000 square feet, according to the New Haven Group. is is the second large pharma- ceutical facility in the region being repurposed for a new industrial use. Last year Massachusetts-based Calare Properties paid $5 mil- lion for the former Bristol My- ers-Squibb (BMS) research campus in Wallingford. e company plans to raze the 915,000-square-foot complex and replace it with two flex/industrial buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet, having determined that that type of use is in high demand. While there is demand for lab space from biotech startups coming out of Yale and New Haven, Inglese says, most of those fledgling enterprises are too small for facilities the scale of the former Alexion or BMS buildings. "And as a landlord, it's difficult to lease to a young biotech company because from a financial stand- point, they're not strong enough for the owner to finance the property with that kind of tenant in place," Inglese explains. Let's make a deal Like the BMS complex, the Cheshire building sold for far less than its assessed value of $18.3 million at the time of the sale, Meriden-based Accel International paid $4.78 million for the former Alexion property at 350 Knotter Dr. in Cheshire. Accel says it will invest some $40 million to repurpose the former Alexion facility for high-tech, high-value manufacturing. which is 70 percent of market value. But Inglese said the pricing was not out of line for a vacant industrial building. "is property [previously] sold for a significant amount of money when it was occupied and built out as a biotech facility, but that use was very different," Inglese says. Cheshire Economic Develop- ment Coordinator Jerry Sitko says the town is gratified to see a vacant building returned to productive use — as well as the return of a compa- ny that le town years ago. "It's good to see a manufacturer growing in the state of Connecti- cut," Sitko says. Accel le Cheshire for Waterbury in the mid-2000s when it couldn't find a space large enough in town

• Cover