Choyce Peterson Sells 32,000 Square Foot Office Building at 315 Post Road West in Westport, CT
Stamford Advocate
Alex Soule, Staff Writer at Stamford Advocate
After the sale last year of the historic Westport headquarters for the world’s largest hedge fund, two more Westport offices have changed hands a mile apart along Post Road West.
Entering March, a Stamford private equity investment firm spent $6.6 million for the office building at 315 Post Road West, with plans to reserve a headquarters suite in the building it is now calling Post West Park. They plan to continue to lease the balance of the building to other commercial tenants.
Less than two weeks later, a larger office building at 8 Wright St. sold for $34 million — nearly $4 million more than what it fetched five years ago prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the changes to previous office norms that has prompted many companies to reduce the amount of space they use.
The newly renamed Post West Park is among the more visible office buildings in Westport, with a dark, glassy facade on its nearly three-acre lot across the street from Birchwood Country Club. The property hit the market last May at about the time American Bailey's CEO had contacted commercial brokerage Choyce Peterson for assistance in finding new office space in the Westport area.
“All of those years I maintained offices in Stamford,” said CEO Doug Bailey, who has lived in Westport since 1985. “I had driven by this building many times and admired it — never thought I would end up owning it.”
Making a separate investment in Westport not long after was a Greenwich investor named Jose Gonzalez-Navarro, who oversees a limited liability company that spent $34 million for 8 Wright St., which fronts Post Road West and overlooks the Saugatuck River.
That was $4 million more than what the Boston real estate investor Waterway Capital paid for the Wright Street office building five years ago. Waterway Capital owns another Westport office building at 450 Post Road East, which it bought in 2021 for $15 million.
Of nearly 20 local office markets in Fairfield County and Westchester County, N.Y., Westport had the fifth lowest vacancy rate in that group, according to Cushman & Wakefield, at 16.5 percent of available offices. Downtown Greenwich leads the region with a vacancy rate of less than 7 percent, with Norwalk having the highest vacancy rate above 42 percent.
“In Stamford and Norwalk we see vacancy levels at or near all-time highs,” said Scott Peterson, vice president of Choyce Peterson. “We had a lot of companies take a look at 315 Post Road West, from throughout the state and outside the state.”
Statewide in Connecticut, just 40 offices were listed for sale on the Loopnet commercial real estate website at 30,000 square feet or larger, including one in Milford that goes to auction in mid-April. Campbell Soup has yet to state its plans for its historic Pepperidge Farm headquarters just east of Post West Park in Norwalk, which it is vacating next year.
Builder Francis M. Deluca developed 315 Post Road West in the late 1970s, the heyday of suburban office construction. "Brud" Deluca is known best for his work as a construction contractor on Stamford’s First Presbyterian Church of Stamford on Bedford Street, known as the Fish Church for its striking architectural design by Wallace K. Harrison. Three years ago, the Fish Church became Connecticut’s most recent inclusion as a National Historic Landmark, Deluca died in April 2022, with his family listing the 315 Post Road West office building for sale last spring.
Westport’s biggest sale ever remains a 2014 transaction for the Nyala Farms Corporate Center fronting Interstate 95 that is home to Bridgewater Associates, ranked by Forbes as the largest hedge fund in the world with more than $124 billion in assets under management.
Bridgewater’s former Glendinning Place headquarters was sold last year for $10.6 million” to an entity whose managing team includes David Waldman, whose Westport projects have included the Bedford Square retail center downtown and the new Bankside House condos fronting the Saugatuck River.
Choyce Peterson, Inc.
Choyce Peterson, Inc.
Choyce Peterson, Inc.
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