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8 Hartford Business Journal • July 17, 2017 www.HartfordBusiness.com for the move, underway for a year, reflects the hospital's expanding roster of treatments and medical research for children with debilitating and life-threatening illnesses. It also will save the hospital $1 million a year in rent once leases on the other office spaces expire. Staff will relocate in stages to space at 10 Columbus, starting in the fall and culminat- ing by this time next year, Shmerling said Nicknamed the "Candy Cane Building'' due to its exterior color and shape, CCMC's site-search team of doctors and administra- tors looked at other downtown Hartford buildings in which to consolidate five sepa- rate offices, including about 70,000 square feet in buildings in East Hartford's Founder's Plaza complex, Shmerling said. "We made a commitment to keep everything in Hartford,'' Shmerling said. "The hospital is in Hartford. We have a commitment to the city.'' Parking, clinical needs Ultimately, Shmerling said, the choice of Hartford Square rested on adequate park- ing. CCMC's lease on 200 parking slots at the Connecticut Convention Center will soon expire, Shmerling said, to make way for UConn staff, instructors and pupils who will populate the university's new down- town campus, starting in late August. The site-search team inspected several downtown buildings, including a pair pitched by Mayor Luke Bronin after CCMC officials briefed him about their relocation plans, but none offered ample parking, Shmerling said. 10 Columbus offers both free surface and below-ground parking. Shmerling said the hospital did not request, nor did the city or state offer, any concessions or incentives to conduct its move. Aside from assembling more of its admin- istrative staff under one roof, Shmerling said the relocation, too, provides CCMC with something more valuable: More space inside its hospital for patient care. In the last year, CCMC has recruited 20 physicians who are specialists in various dis- ciplines. One group of physician-researchers relocated to a new three-bed unit created from office space at CCMC for their clinical study of a childhood ailment, glycogen storage disease, the CEO said. Since January, children with the disease have traveled from 30 states and four countries to Hartford for treatment. "We're converting administrative space to clinical space to treat more patients,'' Shmerling said. His fourth floor office, he said, after the move will become part of a new 5,000-square-foot "infusion suite" for patients who require intrave- nous treatments. Shmerling said that he, along with the hospital's human-resources, finance and technology executives, will be among the first to relocate in October or November to 10 Columbus. Eventually, the CCMC Foundation also will move its offices there. CCMC's chief operating officer and an operations vice president will remain at Washington Street. Forty physicians affiliated with CCMC also will have offices at 10 Columbus, which will be outfitted with telemedicine and teleconfer- encing technology to allow them to interact remotely with other doctors and health experts worldwide, Shmerling said. CCMC's Washing- ton Street campus lacks that capability. Brokers' optimism As excited as CCMC officials are about the move, so are commercial realty brokers involved in the deal. Andrew Filler, a veteran commercial property sales-lease broker who represented CCMC in their search, said the 110,000-square- foot lease at 10 Columbus is the biggest that he can recall in some time. In 2010, UnitedHealthcare announced plans to relocate to and invest $35 mil- lion to renovate 18 floors, or about 450,000 square feet, of downtown Hartford's tallest skyscraper. The 38-story tower is now called UnitedHealthcare Center at CityPlace I. Two years later, homecare coordinator CareCentrix Inc. relocated to about 70,000 square feet in the nearby Stilts Building, 20 Church St., as part of its commitment to hire 150 Trinity-Health New England weighs its own office needs By Matt Pilon mpilon@HartfordBusiness.com A s St. Francis Hospital and Medi- cal Center was underway with its 2015 merger with Michigan's Trin- ity Health, it faced a C-suite decision of its own. St. Francis is now the flagship hospital of a regional system called Trinity-Health New England, which also includes St. Mary's Hospital in Waterbury, Johnson Memorial in Stafford Springs, and Spring- field's Mercy Medical Center. "We thought when we formed the Trinity region that we needed an office space," said Trinity-Health New England CEO Christopher Dadlez. St. Francis decided to renovate the top floor (11,124 square feet) of its Gengras building — part of its Woodland Street campus — into executive offices for the newly formed system. "We already owned it, so we didn't have to pay for space and it wasn't an exorbitant expense, so we just renovated it," Dadlez said. There are eight executives in the space, including Trinity's human-resources chief, who moved his office from Springfield. St. Francis has also been fortunate with parking. About a year ago, a donor gave the hospital a tract of nearby land, allowing it to consolidate several parking leases. Employees now park at the Homestead Avenue lot and are shuttled to the hospital. While its executive team is headquar- tered on campus, Trinity-Health New Eng- land is looking for office space in the region to house the consolidated business office functions of its five hospitals. Dadlez wouldn't reveal where the sys- tem is looking or how many employees might move, but he said the space (30,000 square feet) would be centrally located. Some business office employees were bumped by the Gengras renovations. In addition, it may give the opportunity for Trinity-Health New England to provide bill collection and other "revenue cycle" services, to other hospitals in the broader Trinity system, Dadlez said. n Ample parking was key from page 1 Hartford Square North, 10 Columbus Blvd., houses media and nonprofit tenants in its mostly condominium space. P H O T O | C O N T R I B U T E D Trinity-Health New England CEO Christopher Dadlez sits in his Hartford office. JRUDY@HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM WWW.HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM IN PRINT. ONLINE. IN PERSON OF HARTFORD SUBSCRIBERS ARE THE NUMBER-ONE DECISION MAKERS AT THEIR BUSINESS. 92% To fi nd out more on how to reach your best customers, call Jaime Rudy, Sales Director, at 860-236-9998 x 124 or jrudy@HartfordBusiness.com *Circulation Veri cation Council Audit Report/ Readership Survey: April 1, 2014 - December 31, 2015. REACH YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE THRU THE HARTFORD BUSINESS JOURNAL