Moving offices during a pandemic: How Hartford law firm Murtha Cullina is adjusting

Photos | The SLAM Collaborative Murtha Cullina’s 12th floor office in downtown Hartford’s Prudential Building has a newly renovated cafe (above) and lobby areas.

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By Joe Cooper

As Connecticut begins to loosen COVID-19 restrictions, Hartford law firm Murtha Cullina has gradually started to welcome staff back to the office.

But the firm’s Hartford workforce of 73 full- and part-time lawyers and employees won’t be returning to a familiar environment — and that’s not just because of new office safety guidelines in response to coronavirus.

In late March, Murtha Cullina wrapped up a four-month renovation of its newly minted 12th floor office at the 28-story Prudential Building on Trumbull Street, just as the firm was sending employees home to limit the spread of COVID-19. The firm had previously been headquartered at CityPlace I on Asylum Street for 35 years.

Jennifer M. DelMonico, Managing Partner, Murtha Cullina

“It’s a little unusual that folks left the former Hartford office quickly to work from home and they will be returning to a new building and office,” said Murtha Cullina Managing Partner Jennifer M. DelMonico. “Everyone who has worked in Hartford has, largely, only worked at the CityPlace office. There’s a lot of nostalgia associated with that.”

The layout of Murtha Cullina’s new 25,469-square-foot space was completed prior to COVID-19, though the firm is still promoting social distancing by adding partitions between workstations and floor markings to ensure workers stay at least 6 feet a part, DelMonico said.

It’s also paying employees to park downtown to discourage use of public transportation; limiting occupancy in restrooms; and restricting access to flexible common areas like conference rooms and the kitchen.

Other safeguards — including requiring the use of face masks, boosting sanitation protocols, limiting office capacity to 50% via staggered shifts, and ensuring that staff have undergone temperature screenings — all fall under new state guidelines for reopening offices.

“I think Gov. Lamont’s [Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group] did a great job of thinking through many of these issues, and giving businesses like ours a good blueprint for how to reopen safely. We have really used that as our guide,” said DelMonico, who also serves as board chair of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association.

Murtha Cullina, which has another 100-plus employees split between its New Haven and Stamford offices, considered available offices in six downtown Hartford properties, including CityPlace I and CityPlace II, before signing a long-term lease at 280 Trumbull St., owned by Manhattan’s Grunberg Realty. The office was previously vacated by First International Bank more than a decade ago.

DelMonico said the firm leased the Trumbull Street office in large part because it offered a clean slate to build a more efficient, flexible workspace with assistance from Glastonbury architecture firm SLAM Collaborative and its design-build team.

For example, Murtha Cullina now has smaller workstations that can fit two computer monitors and a stand-up desk.

“The old trend of having the huge partner offices, and smaller associate offices is no longer the case at our firm,” said DelMonico, who declined to disclose how much the office upgrade cost. “That gives us more flexibility as we expand and we won’t have to worry too much about where employees go.”

A lobby in Murtha Cullina's new office at 280 Trumbull St.

A committee of Murtha partners and executives last year made recommendations to SLAM on office design, furniture, lighting, sound and technology features, DelMonico said. SLAM then presented potential design options over a course of several months.

The final product, according to SLAM Principal Terri L. Frink, offers the firm reconfigurable space with flexibility to hold trainings, meetings and other social functions in cafe/breakroom rooms that they didn’t have at CityPlace I. It also has conference rooms strategically placed near the office lobby, which will limit visitor traffic throughout the space. That bodes well during a global health pandemic, Frink says.

But the COVID-19 outbreak will, at least in the short term, change how many of SLAM’s clients use common areas, she said. Companies will have to temporarily shut down spaces that might conflict with ongoing social distancing mandates.

Amid the health crisis, SLAM, Frink says, has also been designing and encouraging one-way hallways in addition to reconfiguring shared office furniture to keep workers at a safe distance. Meeting rooms are also being converted into one-person videoconferencing centers.

“It’s about making spaces less dense so that people don’t congregate until a time when it’s more acceptable for us to do so,” she added.

Frink said she does not expect office tenants to make large investments to solve short-term social distancing needs. The largest takeaway for companies has been that employees are still productive working at home. That may encourage tenants to shrink their office footprints in the future, she suggested.

“Productivity is off the charts if you talk to most companies. It’s working and there is not really a choice,” Frink said. “In the future, companies are going to be put in a position to allow more flexibility for their workers and they are really going to have to give some serious thought as to when people come to the workplace and what is it that they come there for.”

Deal Roundup

Windsor disability-services provider Cattleya LLC has leased a 2,000-square-foot medical office building in Bloomfield, brokers say.

Cattleya LLC recently signed the long-term lease at the one-story office building at 222 Wintonbury Ave., formerly home to Seabury At Home Inc.

Farmington broker Amodio & Co. Real Estate represented both Cattleya and Seabury in the transaction.

Joe Cooper is HBJ’s web editor and real estate writer. He pens “The Real Deal” column about commercial real estate.

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