Cushman & Wakefield’s Hartford office made a big splash late last year when it announced the hiring of a veteran broker from competitor CBRE.
Patrick Mulready joined Cushman & Wakefield as a managing director, where he is primarily focused on investment sales and office leasing in tandem with the firm’s established team led by Executive Director Joel Grieco.
Mulready has already brokered some major deals, including the sale of MassMutual’s 425,000-square-foot former headquarters campus in Enfield. The 65.5-acre property, which had been on the market since 2018, traded hands in May for $3.99 million to a developer that has been active in multifamily development in Connecticut.
Mulready also leased over 90,000 square feet at the Inwood & Winbrook Business Park in Rocky Hill with several transactions.
Overall, in the past year, Mulready said he has leased a total of 275,000 square feet of office and industrial space, and brokered the sale of 11 properties, including office, retail, industrial, development and multifamily sites.
One trend Mulready said he’s been witnessing is the increase in physical occupancy of office space “as many companies are slowly rolling back work-from-home and flex office programs.”
Grieco has also been active, having worked on deals in excess of 1 million square feet over the past 12 months.
That has included repositioning The Hub at 175 Addison Road in Windsor. He brokered the $9 million sale of the 600,000-square-foot industrial building to local owners who have invested significant money into modernizing and amenitizing the facility.
He also represented Selective Insurance in the firm’s relocation from Glastonbury to State House Square in downtown Hartford for 25,000 square feet.
In today’s market, Grieco said, office tenants are focusing more on amenities, building vibe and a landlord’s financial solvency as opposed to only focusing on the economics of a lease.
“West Hartford Center is the perfect example, where tenants are willing to pay significantly higher rents to tap into the energy and vibrancy of the Center,” he said. “In fact, several tenants have struck out trying to find space in West Hartford Center due to lack of available options. I expect the highest-quality buildings with great amenities and strong ownership to outperform the market.”