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Updated: July 10, 2020 Deal Watch Today

Former Lego HQ in Enfield listed for sale

Photos | Colliers International Winstanley Enterprises, the owner of Lego's former Enfield office, is selling the complex for $2 million.

Lego’s former North American corporate headquarters in Enfield remains listed for sale after a year on the market, and months after the company vacated the complex.

Mass.-based landlord Winstanley Enterprises, Connecticut’s largest commercial landlord, in recent weeks changed course and retained property broker Colliers International to market the two-story, 105,483-square-foot complex at 555 Taylor Road, according to Nicholas Morizio, Hartford president for Colliers. 

Realty broker-advisor CBRE previously marketed the property for roughly a year before Colliers took over the listing a month ago, Morizio said in an interview.

Winstanley is asking $2 million for the property and building, which was built for the toy giant in 1995, he said. The property has an assessed value of more than $4.8 million, land records show.

Winstanley, operating as WE 555 Taylor LLC, acquired the Enfield site for $13.1 million in Jan. 2017, town records show. The acquisition was part of a larger, $124-million purchase of 10 commercial properties in Enfield, Bloomfield, Plainfield, and Chicopee and Westfield, Mass.

Morizio said Lego employees vacated the nearly 24-acre property about six months ago, but the company still maintains a major Enfield presence.

A Lego spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment seeking the reason the site was closed, or how many people the company currently employs in Connecticut.

The Taylor Road property in Enfield spans over 24 acres.

The Lego property is being marketed as some towns and developers in Connecticut have been left to figure out what to do with sprawling vacant office parks. As previously reported, there’s been mixed success in reusing shuttered corporate campuses, as landlords face a stagnant office market, rising construction costs and, sometimes, local opposition to new uses.

A Colliers property listing shows the Taylor Road property features 245 parking spaces, a fitness center, amphitheater, cafe and patio space with outdoor seating. It also comes with a recreational area comprising golf putting and driving stations, soccer goals, a fire pit and volleyball court.

“$2 million is an unbelievable price for a building like that,” Morizio said, noting that Winstanley has received a few “low ball offers” for the property. “Someone will get a very good bargain.”

Morizio said the former Lego site is not in need of renovations, and is move-in ready.

HBJ in 2016 reported that Lego renovated an outdated windowless manufacturing/warehouse space there into a new state-of-the-art office that includes open floor plans that grouped together major business units with acoustic enhancements to mask background noise.

The office redesign also included the replacement of existing exterior walls with new glass-curtain walls, skylights and roof-mounted light tubes. There are also strategically located breakout spaces, open meeting spaces, huddle rooms, conference spaces and large group meeting spaces to enrich communication and staff teamwork.

When asked about a potential sales timeline, Morizio said he hoped a buyer would emerge in the next three months.

“The land alone is worth greater than $2 million,” he said. “Worst comes to worst, someone can always buy the building, I hate to say it, knock it down for a flat site to build a quarter-mile square-foot warehouse.”

The Lego Group was founded in Billund, Denmark in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The family-owned company, headquartered in Denmark, sells its products in more than 140 countries. Lego ended manufacturing and distribution operations in Enfield in 2006,but kept offices in town.

Winstanley, meanwhile, owns many distribution, warehouse and other commercial spaces in Manchester, Windsor, West Hartford, Hartford, Enfield and South Windsor, among other locales. It’s also currently looking to build a $100-million bioscience hub in downtown New Haven.

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1 Comments

Anonymous
September 8, 2020

I worked there in the 1990s. Glad see it go.

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