Major Connecticut landlord Griffin Land is bullish on prospects for filling up its vacant Hartford area commercial space and for keeping the rest filled, its parent company’s chief executive says.
In remarks prepared for delivery May 11 at Griffin Land & Nurseries Inc.’s annual meeting in New York, CEO Frederick M. Danziger said the Bloomfield-based land division’s leasing activity so far this year is strong.
Griffin Land so far has leases for about 65,000 square feet of once-empty office space in the Hartford market, Danziger said. Those leases will generate income and cash flow, starting later this year.
In addition, the landlord is in talks, he said, with tenants about renewing a majority of the 165,000 square feet of industrial space on which leases are due to expire the remainder of this year. Griffin also is fielding queries about leasing some of its empty industrial space, although no leases have been signed, the CEO said.
Danziger said Griffin Land’s leasing experience so far runs counter to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s latest forecast that vacancies among the Hartford area’s 1.2 million square feet of industrial space will climb.
Griffin Land is one of Connecticut’s largest private landowners. Its holdings include Griffin Center, an industrial-warehouse-office park straddling Bloomfield and Windsor.
