Nicholas Morizio
President, Hartford and New Haven, Colliers International
Age: 69
Industry experience: 41 years
Nicholas Morizio transitioned from banking into commercial brokerage early in his career, and found rapid career advancement and a long-term leadership role at Colliers International in Hartford. Named a partner at age 28 and president at 39, Morizio oversees the Hartford and New Haven regions for the brokerage. A University of Connecticut graduate, Morizio has participated in more than $800 million in deals representing over 100 million square feet of real estate, and is active in professional organizations as a former chairman of the Counselors of Real Estate’s Connecticut chapter and former president of the Connecticut and Western Massachusetts Society of Industrial and Office Realtors.
Q: What does the recent volume of investment sales by property type tell you about investor demand in the central Connecticut market?
A: Most of the volume is industrial. It’s changing rapidly. What used to sell for $50 a foot has gone to $80 a foot in only a year. It’s location, location and location. As long as you’re near an airport and it’s got 25-foot clear heights or higher and utilities, you’ve got something to talk about. There’s a lot of money looking for [that category]. We’ve never had national investors come to this territory, but now they can’t get anything in the primary markets like New York and New Jersey, and so they are going into the tertiary and secondary markets and bidding up everything. That’s good news for Connecticut and Hartford. The highest rents in the Hartford area are in the Windsor area near the airport. In Connecticut, it would be in Fairfield County if it were available.
Q: How will the town of Windsor’s recent one-year moratorium on warehouse development shift demand for industrial projects?
A: This is what’s happening: a lot of opposition. Where are you going to go? There’s only so much land near the airport. A lot of towns are cutting back, but that’s a part of warehousing. There’s going to be trucks on the roads, because everybody wants their products delivered today. Speculative development makes sense, which never happened before. Speculative development is strong. National investors are coming into the market finally that have the capacity to push these things forward.
Q: Can multifamily developers compete on price with industrial specialists for development sites?
A: It’s hard to say, but right now industrial is probably going to get the highest price. Apartments are still very strong, however.
Q: In the New Haven market, how much additional life science growth is likely following the lab projects by Twining Properties and Winstanley Enterprises and the incubator spaces?
A: It’s not as strong as Boston where the activity is off the charts, but it’s getting toward that. Yale is driving it, and you need more than just one institution, whereas Boston has Harvard and MIT and so many others. In New Haven, they are still leasing 4,000 to 5,000 square feet, and some of the big leases are 20,000 square feet.
Q: What’s your outlook for Hartford office leasing and investment sales?
A: Scary. I don’t see a lot of growth there. There’s a lot of pulling back. United Health is giving back space at CityPlace. A lot of it is that a lot of people don’t want to come back, because they like the lifestyle of working at home if they could and it’s been a change. It’s been two-plus years. They’re kind of used to it, and they like to be in their PJ’s on the computer.
Morizio’s Five Favorite Places to Go Sailing:
- Croatia
- Thailand
- Block Island Sound
- Cape Cod
- Fisher Island Sound
