Mark Duclos
President, Sentry Commercial
Age: 63
Industry experience: 38 years
A merger with a 50-year-old New Haven County brokerage expands Hartford-based Sentry Commercial’s scope of work in the property management business. Co-founded by Mark Duclos in 1991, Sentry Commercial provides brokerage and advisory, construction management and property management services from a pair of locations in downtown Hartford and Rocky Hill.
Duclos is active in commercial real estate trade organizations including a role as president of the Washington, D.C.-based Society of Office and Industrial Realtors from 2019 to 2021.
Q: How did the discussions on the merger with Orange-based Commercial Development Co. originate, and what are the strengths of the combined company?
A: I’ve known Gary [Richetelli], the founder, for years. In the past year or so, he had received a mailer from us and picked up the phone and said, “You got a minute?” We started talking and continued the conversation and that led to the transaction. It’s a scaling of our operations. One of the things about property management is you need to build out that space and technology and the services, and you get over your skis a little bit until you get the portfolio. This almost triples our portfolio. This comes with about 50 properties. We have 20 we were managing, so it gives you automatic scale.
Q: How much additional demand is there for warehouse and distribution space in the Interstate 91 corridor?
A: The industrial market has softened. At the beginning of COVID, everybody was scared to death and the industrial market expanded in a good way. We’ve basically come back to Earth and are seeing more of a typical market. From an inventory and demand standpoint, we are probably a reasonably balanced market. The majority of the big-box construction has shut down. There’s hesitancy. Wayfair’s space came back on the market at Rentschler Field.
Q: What’s your outlook for the central Connecticut office market?
A: The office market is a very different market. I’m down in Atlanta right now getting updates from people across the country, and it’s a mix. In big cities like New York, things are trading at 55 percent [discount] pricing. In Connecticut, the Bloomfield-Windsor market vacancy is upwards of 60 percent and companies are giving back space. The small- to medium-size market isn’t that bad. If you are a company that has 5,000 square feet, you can only downsize so much. Certain properties appear to be resilient to what’s going on: Blue Back Square, Glastonbury, those types of markets are doing OK.
Q: Are you actively recruiting new brokers for your firm, and what’s the availability of the local talent pool?
A: We are. Between the three groups, we have about 25 employees and we are actively hiring on the construction management side, and actively searching for people on the broker-practitioner side. For us, our perfect [broker] hire is probably somebody who has been in the business a few years and wants to elevate what they’re doing with a better company structure and support. We do have kids coming out of college now who are looking to be brokers. They have to swallow hard on the no-salary structure of the industry, but we are seeing more young people in the business. The way we operate our business, we probably are not getting the broker of 15 years.
Q: Your Hartford offices at 160 Trumbull St. include a collaboration venue for the Connecticut and western Massachusetts real estate industries known as REC Hartford. What was the concept for that model?
A: We moved in there in the fall of 2020. It’s an industry gathering spot. We tell our guys: don’t call it an office. It’s a lot more than an office. We run our headquarters and our brokerage out of there as well, and it’s utilized as a venue for industry and overall community. We’ll host a number of events that nonprofits will utilize for fundraisers or board of directors meetings or small events for their members, and then of course we use it for our headquarters.
Q: Dominion Energy is seeking approval for a data center in Waterford connecting to the Millstone nuclear power plant. Do you see data centers as a major commercial growth driver in Connecticut?
A: We had a big push for data centers when the state of Connecticut made the changes and incentives to do it. There were offers all over the place that we have yet to see come to fruition. Our cost of electricity is still a real problem, and this is just a massive problem right now.
Duclos’ Five Favorite Pastimes
- Time with his grandsons
- Time in Vermont with his wife
- Travel (anywhere)
- Hiking
- Watching documentaries on Netflix
