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Commercial brokerage JLL claims a mostly-empty Norwalk office building is headed for a multifamily conversion.

JLL’s first-quarter Fairfield County office report said 535 Connecticut Ave, in Norwalk “has been removed from the statistical inventory in 2025” due to its owners’ plans for a conversion. CT Insider first reported the news.

The brokerage said over 700,000 square feet of Fairfield County office space is slated to be renovated into residential units or demolished to make way for their construction, including the Thorndal Office Park in Darien. National developer Trammel Crow got local officials’ permission to demolish the office park near Darien’s town center earlier this year and replace it with 175 units across five 3-story buildings.

The Norwalk building, a glass-clad near-cube built in 1988, was last sold for $6 million to current owners, an affiliate of Bow Tie Investors, based in New York. Bow Tie, a former cinema operator, bought the building from Greenwich’s Hanover Real Estate, who acquired the building for $16.45 million in 2018.

If Bow Tie goes ahead with the conversion, it will be one of the few multifamily rental properties along that stretch of U.S. 1 in Norfolk. The area is dominated by auto-oriented, big-box retail properties, including an under-construction Wegmans store.

Despite the multifamily conversions, JLL’s quarterly report said the Fairfield County office market suffered over 914,000 square feet of negative absorption in the first quarter, despite 623,000 square feet worth of lease transactions. The total vacancy rate of 25.9 percent and an overall average asking rent of $37.97 per square foot