Hartford Business Journal

28 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | July 18, 2022 FOCUS POWER 25 REAL ESTATE radiation treatments. Grieco said the region's office market faces challenges and opportunities. "The challenges are the obvious — hybrid working is here to stay, construction/renovation costs have increased over 30%, and the Hart- ford area is not attracting many new office users from outside the region," he said. "The opportunity is that this area offers tremendous quality of life, great schools, great housing, and comparatively favor- able costs. And since many compa- nies have learned that a distributed workforce can be managed through technology, the Hartford area can be seen as a lower-cost alternative to New York City or Boston." Grieco said office landlords are competing with remote work, so the most appealing buildings are those with on-site amenities that enhance the employee experience. "Fitness centers, game areas (indoor and outdoor), patios, cof- fee/food options, 'decompression' areas, walking trails, etc.," he said. "Companies seek out the buildings that will make their employees want to be at work, or at least provide a reasonably positive environment as compared to [work from home]." of $40 million and is converting the 35,000-square-foot former New York Sports Club at 65 Memorial Road into new office space. The goal will be to cater the space to professional service firms like finan- cial advisors, advertisers, and digital mar- keting agencies. "Blue Back has [advantages] for office space that other [office] real estate in the area cannot provide," Brandes said in an April interview with HBJ, noting the property's Del- mar Hotel and combination of retail 25 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | APRIL 5, 2021 that for every success, there will be a number of failures." Flaks said he wasn't closing the door to acquiring one of the technology partners down the road, but that is not the main focus. "Our purpose is two-fold: one is to bring world-class health care here to Connecticut and the second is to create jobs," he said. Virtual care Yale New Haven Health and Trinity Health of New England are also partnering with tech companies. Lisa Stump, chief information officer for Yale New Haven Health, said her health system is fully invested in about six tech companies and is helping pilot several others. "We partner with companies that are aligned with our mission to advance care, research and education," Stump said. "We also partner when we can bring something to the table, not just a dollar investment but our subject- matter expertise and our ability to evaluate and test the impact of the technology." Lisa Trumble is president and CEO of the Southern New England Healthcare Organization (SoNE), a physician network affiliated with Trinity Health of New England, parent to Hartford's St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Trumble said SoNE has developed four tech company partnerships in the last two years, including two — with Doxy.me and QliqSOFT — focused on telehealth services. It also partnered with Concert Health, a behavioral health services company. "They provide virtual on-the-spot behavioral health consultations as Connecticut is one of the states that has the weakest level of behavioral health providers in the area," Trumble said. A scientist with Israel-based tech startup IBEX demonstrates artificial intelligence-backed cancer detection technology currently being tested by Hartford Hospital pathologists. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED Lisa Stump Lisa Trumble Building Solid Partnerships in Our Communities Since 1936 Scott Andrusis Vice President, Business Development at Windsor Federal 860.688.8511 | www.WindsorFederal.com | Joel Grieco Commercial brokers in down- town Hartford tend to have staying power. Many have been in the mar- ket for decades, not just years. That's the case with Joel Grieco, executive direc- tor in Cushman & Wakefield's Hartford office. He has 30-plus years of experience and has been in the middle of several recent major deals. He brokered the sale of the 570,000-square-foot, three-building complex at Gillette Ridge in Bloom- field, now known as The Atrium. He's handling leasing for the new owners, who recently invested $2 million in the property to lure office tenants. Grieco is currently representing two of the largest law firms in Hartford as they re-think their space needs amid the new hybrid work environ- ment. He also represented Hartford HealthCare and Yale in acquiring land in Wallingford where they will build Connecticut's first proton therapy center to provide advanced Paul S. Brandes Paul S. Brandes Adding office space to a popular mixed-use development in a post- COVID world seems at odds with the trend of many companies down- sizing their real estate footprints amid mass adoption of the hybrid work environment. But that's precisely what Paul Brandes and his Charter Realty & Development firm plan to do with West Hartford's Blue Black Square. Charter bought the posh, 450,000-square-foot mixed-use property last year for a bargain price Charter Realty has boosted the occupancy rate of West Hartford's Blue Back Square with new office and restaurant tenants. PHOTO | COSTAR Joel Grieco

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