Southern Connecticut BOMA President's Message

As the year progresses we are continuing to strive to look for new members and ways to attract personnel that are new to the building management field - "Emerging Professionals" - as well as attract new principal members to continue to build a strong chapter. We plan on having several classes for these "Emerging Professionals" and our membership committee will be implementing some new programs in an attempt to attract new principal members in order to expand our reach outside of the Stamford market in order to have a more diverse chapter. During the January we held our Annual State of the Market lunch meeting which is always well received by our members. This meeting is set up as a panel in order to provide updates on all types of buildings within the marketplace. Jeff Dunne (CB Richard Ellis), James Fagan (Cushman & Wakefield), Mark Ellman (Celestial Capital Group) and Cory Gubner (RHYS Commercial) all provided insight into the current state of the market and what we can anticipate for 2012 and beyond. The panel set up worked well and allowed members to ask questions pertinent to their line of work. This is always one of our best attended meetings of the year and this year attracted over 80 attendees. In February we did a joint program with Westchester BOMA with the subject of Economic Development (Stamford and Westchester Counties). This program offered great information for attendees regarding how the economic developments teams work and how they can assist with attracting and retaining tenants. Laure Aubuchon (City of Stamford) and Laurence Gottlieb (Office of County Executive) both provided presentations on statistics of the economic growth over the last few years as well as where they see this growth continuing in the future. While there is some competition still out there between the Stamford and Westchester markets they both have begun to diversify the types of businesses they now attract and both markets are looking for 2012 to be a busy year for the market. This program was well attended by both Westchester and Southern Fairfield County Members and we will look to do other programs with Westchester County in the future. Overall the theme of both of these programs was that while the market seems to be improving slightly 2012 will still be a transition year and we may not see the great economic recovery we are all hoping for until 2013 or beyond. We all remain optimistic and all we can do is wait and see how the year progresses. Debbie Smith, president of Southern Connecticut BOMA, is with Cartus, Danbury, Conn.