The owner of Hartford’s Cast Iron building is offering a year of both free rent and free bookkeeping services to entice a company located in a vacant retail space on the ground floor of his downtown Hartford building.
Cast Iron owner Keith Werner put the 25,000-square-foot, 1910-vintage building at 235-241 Asylum Avenue up for sale earlier this year. It features two retail spaces on the first floor with office units above.
A professional services outsourcing company Werner that operates from Cast Iron – ThinkSynergy – recently announced a Kickstarter campaign offering bookkeeping and a year without rent to a company willing to open in a roughly 1,360-square-foot retail space.
The building’s other retail unit is occupied by the NY Market & Deli.
Janet Daneen, ThinkSynergy’s director of business development, said any taker would be required to occupy for three years and would be responsible for lease payments after the close of the first year. The space comes with access to 1,500 square feet of storage, she said.
Daneen placed the value of the year’s grace in rent at $19,000 and the value of free bookkeeping at $30,000 to $40,000.
“Because this space has been vacant for a while and Hartford is struggling with retail space, we thought: ‘Let’s help the city return to more successful retailers and do the core of what we do, help someone come into Hartford and be successful,’” Daneen said. “The long-term goal is for them to stay longer than a year so they can show a success and we can show a success.”
The building remains for sale.
Entrepreneurs interested in taking Werner and ThinkSynergy up on the offer can find application materials at the “contact us” tab at ThinkSynergy.net. Responses are due by Dec. 31.
