One of the major Class A downtown Hartford office towers owned by landlord Shelbourne Global Solutions is facing foreclosure, reflecting the struggles of the city’s office market coming out of the pandemic.
Wells Fargo Bank in June filed a foreclosure action in Hartford Superior Court against an affiliate of Shelbourne alleging the Brooklyn, New York landlord has failed to make payments since February on a $31 million mortgage for the 420,000-square-foot-property at 20 Church St., better known as the Stilts Building.
Benjamin Schlossberg’s New York-based real estate investment and development company Shelbourne Global Solutions has had the biggest impact on downtown Hartford’s commercial real estate market over the past eight years.
Schlossberg’s firm since 2014 has bought hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate downtown including major class A office towers becoming the center city’s most dominant landlord.
It began in 2018, with the announcement that India-based tech giant Infosys would open a Hartford hub employing 1,000 people by 2023.
Four additional prominent tech companies have since followed, announcing Hartford outposts with large staffs to service regional industries and beyond.
“You have seen a number of global tech and information technology firms choose Hartford as a hub for their East Coast operations and I think it is a reflection of a number of Hartford’s strengths,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said in a recent interview.
While workforce diversity, equity and inclusion has received heightened attention since 2020, it was on Sabrina Tucker-Barrett’s mind years earlier.
Shortly after moving to the Greater Hartford area, Tucker-Barrett said she saw a need to help encourage, mentor and influence young girls and women of color, especially in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math.