Name: Colleen Sheridan
Title: Senior vice president, RM Bradley
Experience: 25 years
Colleen Sheridan’s career in commercial real estate has taken her from Fairfield to Manhattan and finally Hartford overseeing investment sales, sale-leasebacks and managing corporate real estate including Honeywell’s 29-million-square-foot national portfolio. A former executive for Cushman & Wakefield and O, R & L Integrated Services, Sheridan joined RM Bradley in 2013 as a senior vice president. In April, RM Bradley moved its Hartford headquarters to the Goodwin Square office tower, and it manages the complex for building ownership Goodwin Square LLC. The landlord recently landed United Bank’s headquarters as a new tenant, with its 68,000-square-foot lease for a new headquarters replacing office and operation centers in Glastonbury and South Windsor. Sheridan is active in the leadership of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Connecticut chapter as president-elect of the organization for 2017.
Q: What were some notable transactions you completed in 2016?
A: I like the deals that have interesting twists. Most notable was the sale of the Lewtan portfolio, a group of three buildings in Hartford. The first was 2830 High St. I love historic buildings and it was built by James Batterson, founder of Travelers Insurance Co. I really enjoyed delving into the history of that building and what he did for the city of Hartford. Back in the 1800s when people were traveling by train, travel was kind of a dangerous thing. So he came up with the idea of selling insurance to people who were riding the train. Hence, Travelers Insurance. That (2830 High St.) was their first headquarters. The other two buildings in the portfolio were on Allyn Street. The new owners is going to turn it into apartments, which is going to be fabulous.
Q: How would you rate the health of the Hartford office market?
A: The biggest notable change is the conversion of functionally-obsolete office buildings into residential buildings downtown. That has made a huge impact in the inventory. Most of these buildings were tired and not usable for office space. That made a big difference because it took a lot of buildings off the market. I don’t think we’ll see too many more, because a lot of buildings don’t lend themselves really well to that. The floor plates have to be a certain size to make sure all of the apartments have windows and things like that. It’s bringing people downtown to these apartments, which is going to be good for the city. And UConn coming downtown as well is going to be a real shot in the arm for the city.
Q: Is the United Bank relocation a tipping point for a recovery?
A: That’s great news. R.M. Bradley manages that building, and I understand there’s a couple of more big deals that are pending. It’s a wonderful historic building and would benefit from having new life in it, and the owners have been fabulous. They’ve spent a lot of money updating the lobbies and tenant floors, turning it into an energy-efficient building. That is the excitement you love to see in Hartford, where someone who’s not local comes into the market and sees an opportunity to take a building and modernize it.
Q: Have office rents started to recover?
A: Office rents haven’t really moved a lot in the last decade, honestly. There just hasn’t been enough demand to move the rents by any significant amount. They’ve crept up a little bit, but haven’t made that jump that would encourage new construction. What we really need in Connecticut is new businesses moving in and there really hasn’t been any of that. Even Gov. Malloy’s First Five (job creation) program, they were companies that were already here. I have four kids myself, and only one lives in Connecticut. There isn’t a lot of opportunity for our young people, so they tend to migrate to cities like Boston and New York and the West Coast. There were not opportunities in the fields they were interested in in the state of Connecticut. But if we could get those sexy companies to come to Connecticut, our young people would be more inclined to stay here.
Q: What are CREW’s programs to watch in 2017?
A: Our awards program in April is very popular, and recognizes all of the deals of 2016 from a variety of architects, engineers and developer-owners. Another one we really enjoy is our career program. We invite typically Hartford high school students to a day outing. We spent a day with them to open them up to careers in commercial real estate, architecture, engineering, brokerage, property management and development.
Sheridan’s Five Favorite Books:
- “The Pillars of the Earth,” by Ken Follett
- “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand
- “Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen
- “Gone with the Wind,” by Margaret Mitchell
- “The Haj,” by Leon Uris
