Hartford HealthCare opens new administrative offices in Farmington

Contributed Hartford HealthCare officials cut a ribbon as part of ceremonies held Tuesday to officially open its new administrative office building in Farmington.

Write a Comment

By David Krechevsky

More than a year after it acquired the building, Hartford HealthCare held a grand opening for its consolidated administrative offices in Farmington.

The healthcare provider paid $14.25 million for a roughly 133,500-square-foot office building on 13.3 acres at 9 Farm Springs Road last March. The seller was Milton 9 Farm Springs LLC, based in White Plains, New York.

Thomas Vaccarelli, HHC’s vice president for facilities, construction and real estate, said in an interview with Hartford Business Journal that the three-story building will now house 12 departments and approximately 425 employees, but no medical offices.

The building, which was erected in 1980, required some renovation, so the departments were brought in at different times as the work was completed, beginning in September, he said.

The departments now housed in the building include community network; emergency management; finance; guest services; human experience; human resources and benefits; information technology; patient access center; public safety; quality and safety; revenue cycle; and talent acquisition.

Vaccarelli said the departments have been relocated from four sites to Farmington, reducing the organization’s office space by about 250,000 square feet and saving “millions of dollars” in lease and building costs.

The only remaining separate location is in Newington, which has a lease that expires in July and houses the clinical informatics department.

“We have people left in there, but not much,” Vaccarelli said. “That’s a location we own. We’re working with the town of Newington right now to figure out what the highest and best use of that location is.”

Hartford HealthCare held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday morning to celebrate the official opening of the Farm Springs building, now that a majority of it is occupied. Some of the employees in the building had been working remotely, he added.

“That was a big question we wanted to look at, to make a place where it wasn’t forcing people to come back,” Vaccarelli said. “It was a place where people wanted to come back. There were a lot of folks there that were excited about what’s happening here.”

He added that there will still be about 1,000 square feet of undeveloped office space in the building even after the Newington location is closed, so it is possible Hartford HealthCare could create more jobs in that location.

“There’s a couple of things that we’re looking at as we activate the space, but nothing that’s been identified yet,” he said.