Health insurer Cigna Corp. is making multiple local real estate moves that will shift more employees to its Bloomfield corporate headquarters, which is currently undergoing a $90-million plus renovation.
Cigna is leaving 125,000 square feet at Windsor’s 3 Waterside Crossing office building, which currently houses 300 IT employees, according to Mark Slitt, a company spokesman.
Those employees will be moving to Cigna’s historic Wilde Building in Bloomfield, Slitt said.
Cigna is also leasing 65,000 square feet in MetLife’s Bloomfield office building, at 1300 Hall Blvd., which will provide extra flexibility as the company continues an interior renovation of its headquarters.
Cigna announced plans to do a major renovation of its corporate office last year, which will include the purchase of new furniture and IT equipment as well as renovating the inside of the building and creating more conference rooms and flexible office space.
In addition to its main campus office renovation, Cigna also plans to double the size of its training and learning center at 1350 Boulevard Rd., a little-known facility — known as “Cigna University” — that is taking on added importance following the company’s $67 billion purchase in 2018 of pharmacy-benefits manager Express Scripts.
Cigna announced plans last October to add a 5,310-square-foot addition to the 5,900-square-foot building, which formerly housed a daycare center, along with 49 parking spaces.
Cigna’s combination with Express Scripts doubled the size of the company and is driving the need for more training space, the company has said. That deal also brought together Cigna and New Jersey-based IT company GalaxE.Solutions, which was a longtime vendor to Express Scripts. GalaxE.Solutions recently leased 24,000 square feet of office space at City Place I as part of a major expansion plan in the city, where it plans to hire hundreds of people.
It wasn’t clear if the relocation of Cigna’s IT staff out of Windsor has anything to do with the insurer’s relationship with GalaxE.Solutions.
Cigna occupied all the office space in 3 Waterside Crossing, which is now for lease and for sale at $7.6 million, according to online commercial real estate listing service LoopNet. The building is owned by Three Waterside Crossing Assoc LLC, which purchased the building in 2001 for $10.6 million, town records show.
The MetLife building was purchased by the New York-based life insurer in 2007 for $50 million after the company moved out of leased space in downtown Hartford. MetLife has considerably shrunk its Connecticut presence over the years.
