December 20, 2019
With the telltales of an ice storm preserved near perfectly on tree branches on a sunny December day, the approach to the newly rechristened Summit at Danbury was nothing short of spectacular.
As for the colossal building itself, after a long freeze for commercial leasing? The new owner is showing off for the first time what it promises will be a spectacular rejuvenation — preserving part of its office origins but bringing in residents as well to create a new community in Danbury’s wooded Reserve.
More than a year after Summit Development spent nearly $18 million to purchase Matrix Corporate Center in Danbury, new office tenants are now trickling into the sprawling building that was constructed originally as the headquarters of Union Carbide, among Connecticut’s largest office buildings at 1.2 million square feet.
Under CEO Felix Charney, Summit Development has yet to secure approval to convert half of The Summit at Danbury to residential apartments. Summit Development envisions about 400 in all, on a hillside that has already seen massive development with Rivington by Toll Brothers, and before that the Abbey Woods apartment complex and others.
But Summit has taken a small but significant step toward a residential reboot, recruiting a restaurant group to create The Market Place at The Summit at Danbury, offering both fine dining and convenience foods for takeout.
It is one of several changes in store for The Summit at Danbury, according to Michael Basile, Summit Development’s on-site project director, to include a new fitness center and possibly in time an outdoor pool facility for residents.
“What (Rivington) has done is it has activated the hillside,” Basile said. “We’ve been the hole in the doughnut, excluded from everything else around it. … Our game plan when we came in here was to give it a front door.”
‘A city within a city’
The Market Place will be situated at that front door adjacent to the main lobby for The Summit at Danbury, with the restaurant to be run by its namesake chain which has existing Market Place Kitchen & Bar on nearby Mill Plain Road in Danbury and in Newtown, with an eclectic menu of entrees and an extensive wine, beer and cocktail list. The restaurant will seat up to 100 people and will include convenience foods for takeout.
From Basile’s perspective in real estate, The Summit at Danbury’s appeal is space that allows for any number of venues to be tacked on, with current plans to include a large new fitness center and a co-working area for tenants and guests.
But the apartments will take time — with Basile unwilling to say how long as Summit seeks approval from the city. He said the building’s existing plumbing is more than sufficient to handle the extra demands of 400 residential units, which will be clustered on the west side of the building’s existing, four-story pods that each look down on central courtyards.
“We’re essentially creating a city within a city,” Basile said. “We have a deal with the Danbury Police Department to do a West Side substation, on site. … It will give them the opportunity to have something concrete here on the West Side, which they don’t.”
Basile estimates he fields a half-dozen queries a week for commercial space, with Summit having retained the Stamford office of Cushman & Wakefield for brokerage services. Several new commercial deals have been finalized in the past few months, to include Aires, which helps corporations manage the relocation of employees, and which is relocating its Northeast regional office to The Summit at Danbury from Shelter Rock Road; and Autism Behavioral Health which provides services for families.
Autism Behavioral Health founder Jessie Wong said several factors played into the decision to select The Summit at Danbury for her clinic.
“The location is great — it’s right on I-84 and it’s close to the New York border, so we can attract new clients,” Wong said. “It’s a secure building — when you think about children, you think about safety, and we wanted a building that you can trust. … The space allows us to grow as we need (extra) capacity. And it’s bright.”
If Charney sees a bright future for The Summit at Danbury, there are determinants for the property’s future outside Summit Development’s control, to include the overall commercial real estate market driven by employer decisions to add jobs. As of the third quarter, the greater Danbury office market had a 31 percent vacancy rate according to Cushman & Wakefield, about 4 percentage points higher than Fairfield County as a whole.
And with the city exploring the revival of a dormant rail spur to connect to the MTA’s Hudson Line for a shorter ride to New York City than the existing Danbury Branch allows, the Summit at Danbury could benefit with a nearby station on Mill Plain Road.
“That’s the home run,” Basile said. “The track is there — it just needs to be brought up to speed. … It’s definitely viable.”