Stacked Lumber and Blueprints at a Construction Site

A West Hartford landlord wants to add retail space and unspecified other mixed-use additions to the town’s largest office buildings.

Figure 8 Properties has filed a proposal with West Hartford’s Planning & Zoning Commission to subdivide its 433 South Main St. property by breaking off a 1-acre chunk and build a 2,417-square-foot Starbucks with a drive-through.

Despite the drive-through, the application indicates Figure 8 hopes Starbucks will serve as a major site amenity and generate a significant share of its business from the property’s current tenants.

The application indicates that the company is far from done with development at the site, a 15.79-acre assemblage hosting one 3-story, 150,988-square-foot office building, a 1-story, 12,009-square-foot medical office building hosting a Hartford Health Care outpost and parking for the two. The property is located just off Exit 41 on Interstate 84.

Figure 8 has owned the building through an affiliate since 2018, town property records show, and keeps its office in the property’s office building.

A “phase 1B” will follow the Starbucks development, Figure 8 lawyer Lawrence Shipman wrote in the company’s application. This will cover a renovation and 23,576-square-foot addition to reposition the medical office building. Figure 8 plans to file a development application for this phase “very shortly.”

No subsequent phases are named in the application, but some Hartford-area developers have been turning to housing projects on suburban and downtown office sites in order to compensate for softening office occupancy rates.