Keith Werner, president of downtown Hartford business services provider ThinkSynergy, said his coworking space can accommodate about 30 people, but membership has dwindled to about half capacity over the past three months.
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Keith Werner, president of downtown Hartford business services provider ThinkSynergy, offers four dedicated offices big enough for up to four people, along with eight “hot desks” at coworking space in his Asylum Street building.
The hot desks are available for use by clients on a pop-in basis, and aren’t dedicated to a particular user.
Werner said his space can accommodate about 30 people, but membership has dwindled to about half capacity over the past three months.
“I’m finding a lot of people who are going back to their offices because there is a certain percentage of companies that are still asking them to come back in,” Werner said. “And for that reason, there is less of a demand in the Hartford area for coworking.”
Werner said he’s been approached by brokers seeking to lease 50% or more of his building’s office space, at 241 Asylum St., for one dedicated user.
“There may be some boutique firms that are wanting small spaces under 3,000 square feet in Class B buildings,” he said.
Real estate investor Joseph Moruzzi said carving up office buildings for small users is more about survival these days, than anything else.
In 2016, he paid $750,000 for a roughly 65,000-square-foot office building in Cheshire that formerly housed Webster Bank’s lending office. Nearly seven years later, he has managed to almost fill the building by dividing three of its five floors into small office suites, some with room for only one to two users.
“It cost a boatload and it was necessary to do,” Moruzzi said. “If I didn’t do that, I would be sitting on it still. You either have to change the way your office space is, or you will be eating office space for a long time.”
Such a conversion isn’t possible in “deep” buildings, as users demand window access, Moruzzi noted. Renovations to reconfigure electrical and HVAC services also come with steep costs, he said.
Given rising interest rates and building material costs, it’s hard to make the math work today on an office conversion or retrofit, without an extreme bargain on the purchase price, he said.
“It’s not a bed of roses,” Moruzzi said. “It’s a necessity that needs to be done in certain buildings that can handle the conversion.”
