One week from today tax accountants/consultants CohnReznick LLP will debut downtown Hartford’s 12-story Metro Center office building as its new corporate address and home to around 230 veterans and neophytes.
The move into 50,000 square feet on the upper two floors of the 293,639-square-foot tower anchoring downtown’s northern rim at 350 Church St. also will put it closer than it’s been in years to being fully occupied. The Fremont Group is landlord.
Starting this Friday, CohnReznick staff and movers will begin packing up files, equipment, furniture and other essentials from its offices in Glastonbury and Farmington to relocate over the weekend to their new quarters, said the firm’s New England managing partner Frank Longobardi.
The firm joins Lincoln Financial Group and the Connecticut Business & Industry Association as the building’s major tenants. Lincoln’s offices at one point included both upper floors, Longobardi said.
“Moving downtown,” he said, “is a consolidation of offices that puts staff under one roof to boost efficiency and culture. I really believe downtown is starting to make some strides.”
CohnReznick is budgeting around $1.75 million, or $35 a square foot, not counting the lease, for new furniture, fixtures and technology for its 11th- and 12th-floor space, he said. Some of the firm’s old furnishings are being donated to clients and area nonprofits.
Furniture won’t be the only new things CohnReznick brings with it downtown. Fifteen recent college graduates from UConn and other in- and out-of-state schools who joined the staff Nov. 10 will be coming downtown to work as tax and audit associates, Longobardi said.
“It’s probably the biggest [hiring] class we’ve ever had” in Connecticut, he said. The firm’s Boston office recently hired between six and eight graduates.
In Connecticut, CohnReznick currently has offices at 180 Glastonbury Blvd. in Glastonbury and 76 Batterson Park Road in Farmington.
The estimated 20,000-square-foot Glastonbury lease that expires in December dates back a decade, but the firm has had a presence in the town since 1989, Longobardi said. The Farmington office’s lease also covers about 20,000 square feet, plus another several thousand more the firm had sublet to others. That space will stay vacant until the lease expires in late 2015.
Eventually, CohnReznick plans, he said, to hang its lighted logo atop Metro Center, copying other major downtown building tenants who use theirs as branding billboards.
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Enfield, Stafford rehab sites
Integrated Rehabilitation Services has added a pair of clinics in Enfield and Stafford, bringing to nine the number of its rehab facilities in the state.
The 2,000-square-foot Enfield clinic, with eight employees at 145 Hazard Avenue (Route 190), is a new partnership with Enfield Physical Therapy, officials said. Enfield Therapy founder Shelly Quirk will continue to own and manage the Enfield location whose landlord is D&G Corton Associates LLC.
Integrated partner Americo Rodrigues runs the 2,500-square-foot Stafford clinic, at 58A West Stafford Road (Route 190), which has five workers. The Stafford clinic’s landlords are Robert Charland and Catherine Maule. Both clinics are open weekdays, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Integrated’s other Connecticut clinics are in Ellington, Manchester, Norwalk, Stamford, Suffield, Tolland and Vernon.
