Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | August 15, 2022 9 On The Record | Q&A Rhonda Tobin is the managing partner of law firm Robinson+Cole's Hartford office, which will be relocating to One State Street. HBJ PHOTO | GARY LEWIS Here's what's driving Robinson+Cole's major downtown Hartford office move By Greg Bordonaro gbordonaro@hartfordbusiness.com Downtown Hartford's office leasing market has been relatively quiet since the pandemic hit more than two years ago. But a major move was recently announced by law firm Robin- son+Cole, which is relocating out of 280 Trumbull St., where it has been based for four decades, to the historic Hartford Steam Boiler building at One State St., in September 2023. As part of the move, Robinson+- Cole will reduce its footprint from 120,000 square feet on six floors to 75,000 square feet on five top floors at State Street. The building is owned by Hartford Steam Boiler, which has long ties to the law firm. At the age of 21, Lucius F. Robinson, the firm's founder, set up a one-man law office on State Street in 1845. His younger brother, Henry C. Robinson, later joined the firm and was a director of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co. In addition, his son, Lu Robinson, would later also serve as a director of Hartford Steam Boiler's board. The State Street site will be the sixth Hartford location in the law firm's 177-year history, and its representative of the evolving way companies think about and use office space amid the rise of the hybrid work model. The relocation also comes as Robinson+Cole is undergoing a growth spurt that's held steady through the pandemic. It now has 220 employees in the city, including lawyers and staff. Firmwide it has about 450 employees with offices throughout the Northeast, Mid-At- lantic, Florida and California. Rhonda Tobin leads Robinson+ Cole as managing partner of its Hartford office. She recently chatted with Hartford Business Journal about what's driving the office move and her views on the future of work. Here's what she had to say: Q: Why is the firm choosing to move its offices? A: We've been in our current building for 40 years. It's been a great home for us in Hartford but with the lease coming up in a couple of years it was a good time even pre-pandemic to look at space needs and our ameni- ties and start thinking a little more about what our offices ought to look like in the future. And then COVID hit and we came out of it in a hybrid work model, which I think we will be in for the foreseeable future, if not forever. So we layered that on, trying to figure out what does this all mean from a technology standpoint, utilization standpoint and how does that impact the way we recruit and retain people. We viewed it as a perfect opportu- nity to shrink our space, revisit how we use our space and really plan for the next generation of the law firm. Q: Did you start this process earlier then you normally would have, or was this the typical time frame? A: We started earlier for a couple of reasons. One was because there aren't that many buildings that can accommodate what we are looking for, both the square footage that we need and the place we would like to be, which is called the top of the stack, or top of the building, and that has the type of amenities we are looking for. We all know there hasn't been that much construction of new commer- cial space in Hartford over the last 40 years. We gave ourselves a longer lead time so we could have some choices. We ended with two excellent choices, to stay where we are and renovate in place, or move to One State Street. We did look at other buildings but those are the two that met what we really needed. Q: Was your search contained to downtown Hartford, or did you look outside the city as well? A: I would say we only looked in downtown Hartford. We did have some partners that raised other options outside of Hartford, which were interesting and could have been entrepreneurial, but we decided it was our commitment to stay in the city, being here since 1845. We really take seriously our role as a corporate citizen here in Hartford and we are very tied to the community. Q: You mentioned that the office space will be designed to accom- modate the hybrid workplace and move away from the traditional model. What does that entail? A: I think one of the key components that we decided was that we are going to go to single-size offices for our lawyers, which does enable us to shrink our footprint a little bit. Gone are the days with partners with big offices and fancy furniture and all of that. This gives us a little uniformity. It also gives us flexibility, which has been a key buzzword for this whole process. We are not going to build a mock trial room that gets used 10 times a year. Instead, let's build some conference space that can flex into a mock trial room. We are trying to think about from a hybrid perspective how many days a week people are going to be in the office. Should we be thinking about RHONDA TOBIN Managing Partner, Hartford office Robinson+Cole Education: Duke University, bachelor's degree, economics and Spanish; Duke University, law degree Office Snapshot One State Street Type: Office Size: 500,000 square feet Current owner: Hartford Steam Boiler Assessed value: $26.9 million Other notable tenants: Hartford Steam Boiler, McElroy Deutsch, Morgan Lewis, UBS

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