Charter Breaks Ground For Expansion On Commerce Road

By Kaaren Valenta

Charter Communications broke ground last week for a new two-story, 18,000-square-foot building on a two-acre site at 9 Commerce Road, next to the company’s existing regional headquarters.

All Charter employees were invited to attend the event, as well as Charter’s Advisory Council members, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal, and the owners of neighboring businesses on Commerce Road.

Because of the growth of new services such as digital cable and Charter Pipeline high-speed Internet access, the company has outgrown the existing building at 11 Commerce Road, which opened in May 1991, and has been leasing additional space in other Commerce Road buildings. When complete in December 2001, the new $1 million building on Commerce Road will house Charter’s 24-hour customer service department, as well as the marketing, engineering, and administrative departments. The older building will serve as the regional office and continue to provide space for the transmission facility and local access studios.

“The building will allow us to reunite all (of the charter departments) except Charter Media in one location,” said John Dee, Charter’s group director of operations. (Charter Media leases space in a new building on Berkshire Road next to Western Connecticut Federal Credit Union.)

Since 1995, Charter has completely upgraded the system twice, expanding customers’ options from the original 54-channel lineup to 78 analog cable television channels, more than 120 digital channels, digital music, high-speed Internet service, and paging. The system serves 62,000 homes in 14 towns and recently installed its 16,000th digital customer and 10,000th high-speed Internet customer. The company has more than 400 employees in Connecticut.

William A. Achilles, Jr, of Southport is the architect for new Commerce Road building. The general contractor is Patrick Cleary of PBC, Inc. in Brookfield. Larry Edwards of Newtown is the engineer.

Originally, the building was to be constructed for The Harrison Group, a market research and consulting that was located in Sandy Hook. But the company moved to Waterbury instead, saying it needed additional space immediately. Charter then opted to buy the two-acre site and build.

“We were lucky that someone was waiting in the wings,” Mr Cleary said. “But what made (the site) attractive is sewers.”

When the original Charter building was erected, there were no sanitary sewers in Newtown. Poor soil on the adjacent site had hindered its development

Mr Achilles said Charter also plans a second phase, a 50x100-foot addition to the new building. These plans have not yet been presented to the town’s land use agencies for approval, he said. A possible third phase, connecting the two buildings, may be considered at a later date.

Charter Communications celebrated its 25th anniversary of serving customers in Western Connecticut in October 1999. The company’s northeast region now serves 360,000 customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York as part of its national 6.4 million customer base.