For Rent: Half-Empty Frontier Building

More than 150,000 square feet of downtown office space is up for lease — at a mid-century phone company headquarters half-filled with electronic equipment, and ready for conversion to life science laboratories.

That’s the latest with the Frontier Communications building at 310 Orange St.

More than 150,000 square feet of retail, office, data center, and lab space are available to rent across 12 floors of the roughly 400,000 square-foot building.

Colliers Broker John Keogh told the Independent that roughly half of the former Southern New England Telephone (SNET) building is still occupied by the (now Dallas-based) Frontier telecommunications company. The other half is empty.

Most of the space that Frontier still uses at 310 Orange, meanwhile, is occupied not by human beings but by ​“switchgear” and other electronic equipment for Frontier’s landline, internet, and mobile telephone service.

The property consists of two connected buildings: an Art Deco office building that was constructed in 1954, and an adjacent building constructed in the 1970s. Both buildings contain ​“switchgear.” Colliers’ listing for the property states that it has six passenger elevators, a loading area with separate freight elevator, six back-up generators, 21 on-site parking spaces and 525 parking spaces at the Audubon Square garage. (The listing also states that more than 192,000 square feet of space is available to lease. Keogh said that is a mistake, and that the amount of available space is actually closer to 150,000.)

Before the pandemic, roughly 400 Frontier employees came to work every day at 310 Orange St., according to Keogh. He said that only around a dozen people work in-person at the Orange Street complex today, with a vast majority of Frontier’s local employees still working remotely. He said Frontier plans on bringing back around 60 in-person workers to the Orange Street offices, and is looking to sub-lease the remaining empty space.

Keogh said the building has been on the rental market for nearly two years, dating back roughly to when Frontier sold the property for $73 million and signed a ​“lease back” agreement with a New Jersey-based real estate company called Avalair. Keogh said he’s been working for around four months on trying to lease portions of the property. 

“It’s uniquely well-suited to the market in New Haven, because there’s such a high level of infrastructure in the building, particularly electrical infrastructure,” he pitched. ​“The building is very well-suited to be converted to lab space for life sciences tenants.” And there’s always demand for more lab space amidst New Haven’s biotech boom.

Keogh said he’s ​“close to making a deal” to lease 12,000 square feet of first-floor space at the building to a medical tenant. 

Given the post-pandemic trend of working from home and persistently vacant office buildings, is he concerned that the Frontier building will sit mostly empty of workers for a while to come?

“If this were just a typical office building, it would be a lot harder to lease the space,” he said. But, again, the building is ​“well-suited for conversion to lab space” and ​“most of the leasing activity in New Haven has to do with life science companies that need lab space.”

Will the Frontier sign remain at the top of the building’s Orange Street facade?

“That remains to be determined.”

Asked for comment for this article, a Frontier spokesperson said, ​“We provide high-speed, reliable fiber internet connectivity to homes and businesses in New Haven, and our building at 310 Orange Street plays a key role in that. It houses key components for our network functions and operations. This location also serves as an important workplace for many of our dedicated employees. Recognizing the potential to optimize our space, we decided that leasing a portion of it would benefit both Frontier and the City of New Haven.” 

As evidence of Frontier’s continued commitment to Connecticut, they also pointed to a milestone the company reached in late June, when it expanded high-speed fiber internet to one million homes and businesses across Connecticut thanks to a $800 million investment in the state.