FAIRFIELD COUNTY
BUSINESS JOURNAL
4 | NEW RULES
January 26, 2015 | VOL. 51, No. 4
14 | NEWSMAKERS
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DARIEN ROWAYTON THRIVES WITH CONSERVATIVE, COMMUNITY MODEL BY BILL FALLON bfallon@westfairinc.com DARIEN ROWAYTON BANK WAS FOUNDED de novo in 2006, which recently prompted Robert Kettenmann, the bank’s president and chief operating officer, to say, “In hindsight, that was one of the worst years to start a bank. It was hard for us to attain scale before the crash.” The picture has turned since then, according to Kettenmann, but he termed the recovery fragile. “Regarding the commercial sector, what we struggle with is what all the banks in this area are struggling with,” he said. “The economy in Fairfield and Westchester counties is not expanding fast enough and the banks are competing for pieces of
BANKING ON THE RECOVERY
» BANKING, page 9
Robert Kettenmann, president and COO of Darien Rowayton Bank. Photo by Bill Fallon
Fairfield County office leasing heats up CBRE report: 2014 figure bests five-year average
BY CRYSTAL KANG ckang@westfairinc.com WITH CONFIDENCE GROWING IN THE ECONOMY, office leasing activity in Fairfield County is booming. Last year’s overall leasing finished at 2.9 million square feet, which was 17 percent above the five-year average leasing of 2.5 million per year. While office leasing activity dipped in
Westchester County from 1.7 million square feet in 2013 to 1.3 million square feet last year, Fairfield County experienced a 28 percent uptick during the same period, according to a recent CBRE Group Inc. report. Fairfield County’s leasing activity went up from 2.3 million square feet in 2013 to 2.9 million square feet last year. The town of Greenwich and city of Stamford notably experienced pent-up demand for office space in 2014. Fewer vacant
offices were returned and expansions in the commercial business districts brought about a high positive net absorption. “Absorption refers to the net change in occupied space versus space being returned,” said Paul Jacobs, executive vice president at CBRE in Stamford. “The higher the positive absorption the better it is for the market.” » LEASING, page 6
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