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What Goes Up
Beckerman plans 55,000 s/f office building at Orange and Audubon
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Business New Haven
8/6/2001
By: BNH
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Former Starter Sportswear entrepreneur David Beckerman is preparing to build the first office building to be erected in the Elm City in nearly a decade.
Beckerman, whose sports-marketing empire went bankrupt in 1999, is close to breaking ground on One Audubon Street, a 55,000-square-foot structure at the corner of Orange and Audubon streets - on spec.
The last major office buildings erected in New Haven were David Chase's Connecticut Financial Center at 157 Church Street and Century Tower, at the intersection of Whitney Avenue and Grove Street. Both were completed in the early 1990s.
The five-story structure “will really be a beautiful office facility,” Beckerman says. The developer says he expects to break ground “early this fall.”
“We feel comfortable that [Orange and Aububon] is an area of the city that has a cachet that attracts a certain kind of professional,” Beckerman says. His Granite Square building at 700 State Street today “is 100-percent leased,” he says.
Beckerman also is marketing the former Starter building at 370 James Street in New Haven and is moving ahead with plans for a one-million-plus-square-foot “Acorn Technology Campus” at the former Sursum Corda site in West Haven (see related story, page 3).
Beckerman says his new office building will benefit from its location “one block from the new railroad station being built on State Street,” he says. “It's very close to the heart of Yale and the cultural attractions of Audubon Street, so strategically it's in a very good spot.”
Beckerman says he is moving ahead with groundbreaking even without commitments from potential tenants. “We have a lot of people we're in conversion with, and several people have expressed serious interest,” he says. “But if you ask me at this moment, 'Do we have a signed deal?' the answer is no.”
Asked to characterize prospective tenants for One Audubon, Beckerman says, “There are companies that are expanding and need more space, but we're also talking to companies from outside the area” about leasing space.
Asked about perceptions of New Haven on the part of the latter group, Beckerman says, “The biggest problem that we have found is parking. Parking is a severe problem. We have parking attached to the building [between Granite Square and the new building].”
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