Pita Expands, Moves To Rocky Hill

After a dozen years in downtown Hartford, Pita Communications is headed to the suburbs and a custom-built office space in Rocky Hill.

The move will more than double Pita’s office space from 4,200 square feet at One State St. to roughly 10,000 square feet at 40 Cold Spring Road in Rocky Hill.

Company officials expect the move to be completed by Friday.

“We actually looked at several locations downtown and it was about six months of due diligence before we made a decision,” said Kim Pita, managing principal of Pita Communications.

“We determined that once we weighed all the options, Rocky Hill was the best fit,” she said.

It has been a busy time for the company since it acquired new media firm Vrroomedia in 2007.

The two companies have been sharing the Hartford space.

Now Pita (and Vrroomedia) will begin sharing a 20,000-square-foot, one-story building in Rocky Hill with Solidus, a business space company and a long-time client of Pita Communications.

The companies have been working together on environmental branding projects for several years.

“We were looking towards collaborating with Solidus and we’re sharing the building with them,” Pita said.

“That was a major part of the move,” she explained.

Solidus CEO Mark Charette said in a statement that the alliance between the two companies would benefit his clients.

“Having a branding agency like Pita in contiguous space will allow us to continue to solidify and expand our relationship in many ways,” Charette added.

The new studio for Pita Communications — designed by West Hartford-based Advent Design and built by Solidus — includes two large conference rooms, a resource center, collaboration areas, modular work pods, café and coffee bar. An outdoor patio for staff gatherings was also included in the new office space.

ABH Stays In Middletown

Middletown-based Advanced Behavioral Health isn’t going anywhere for a while after signing a six-year lease to remain at 213 Court St. at the Middlesex Corporate Center.

It wasn’t a simple decision made overnight, said ABH’s senior vice president and CFO David Judd. In fact, the company investigated owning office space after hiring real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

“We made the decision to stay after looking at purchasing versus leasing,” Judd said. “We looked over the market and realized that we didn’t have the flexibility to purchase, so we focused our efforts on leasing.”

ABH looked at spaces in Middletown, Rocky Hill, Meriden and Wallingford but not in Hartford.

“We have employees that are coming up from Fairfield County, so Hartford wasn’t a viable option,” Judd said.

Eventually, Judd said the Middlesex Corporate Center’s landlord — Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co. — were very accommodating in allowing ABH to expand and consolidate their current space.

ABH previously had about 23,000 square feet in the 11-story, 197,000-square-foot building, but it was spread across six different floors.

“We had kept expanding over the years,” Judd said. “So whenever space opened up or a tenant left, we would take it. But it could mean a small space, like 1,000 square feet on a floor.”

The new lease is for 28,293 square feet consolidated on two floors.

“We love Middletown, we love downtown and the parking, and we love the amenities of the building,” Judd said. “It really worked out for us.”

ABH is a nonprofit behavioral health management company that provides a variety of services in creating information technology and data management tools.

Sean O’Leary is a Hartford Business Journal staff writer.