Byline: Peter Healy
Jul. 7--Velocity Sports & Entertainment LLC plans to move its headquarters and about 90 jobs from Wilton to East Norwalk next month. The new 33,700-square-foot space at 230 East Ave. will provide room for the sports marketing company to grow, said Robert Wilhelmy, Velocity Sports' chief financial officer.
Founded in 1999, Velocity Sports had been at 10 Westport Road in Wilton for the past three and a half years, Wilhelmy said. The company's Wilton lease of 27,000 square feet was up, so it chose to sublease part of 230 East Ave. from Modem Media Inc. until 2009, Wilhelmy said.
He said Velocity Sports expects to add 25 employees a year and its space at the East Norwalk building can hold 150 to 160 people. Velocity Sports helps customers such as FedEx Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. plan and carry out sponsorship activities related to sports. Velocity Sports is a unit of Aegis Group plc, a marketing services company based in Great Britain.
The new space for Velocity Sports is next to the East Norwalk train station. The convenient location for rail commuters can help Velocity Sports recruit new workers, Wilhelmy said.
'We have a lot of folks who want to live in (New York) city and can do a reverse commute here,' said Wilhelmy, a principal and co-founder of the firm.
Fred Brown, chairman of Norwalk-based Desmond Virgulak Brown Commercial Realty Inc., said 230 East Ave. has been hard to market because the placement of its elevators and stairs make it difficult to subdivide into smaller spaces.
That meant Velocity Sports was able to lease the space at below-market rates.
Velocity Sports is paying between $12 and $20 per square foot per year for its office space, said Jeff Gage, senior vice president at Stamford-based Albert B. Ashforth Inc. commercial real estate. The average asking rents in Norwalk are $26 per square foot for Class A space and $22.34 for Class B space, according to CB Richard Ellis commercial real estate.
'My guess is Velocity got a very good deal,' Gage said.
Gage and John Stoddard of Ashforth represented Modem Media in its sublease. James Randel, president of Rand Real Estate Services in Westport, represented Velocity Sports.
Modem Media Inc., an Internet marketing company, no longer fills the bulk of the 117,000-square-foot East Avenue building, at which a Fitness Edge gym is another tenant.
Boston-based Digitas Inc., a digital and direct marketing company, acquired Modem Media last year.
Originally constructed as a factory in 1910, 230 East Ave. later became the Norwalk Factory Outlets retail center. It was redeveloped as an office building in 1999.
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