Hartford Financial to put regional headquarters in Gold River
By Bob Walter
Bee Staff Writer
(Published March 6, 2001).

The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. will move its regional headquarters to the emerging Gold Pointe Corporate Center at Hazel Avenue and U.S. 50 in Gold River, officials said.

About 300 employees will move east along Highway 50, from smaller offices between Watt Avenue and Bradshaw Road in Rancho Cordova, said a spokeswoman at Hartford headquarters in Connecticut.

The Hartford is leasing about 80,000 square feet in a 110,000-square-foot office complex that is being built by Panattoni Development Co., said Thomas C. Aguer, a partner in the brokerage firm of Aguer Pipgras Associates.

Aguer, who is leasing the park for Panattoni, said Washington Mutual has agreed to lease about 9,000 square feet. He also has a deal working with "a solid Fortune 100 company ... another financial type" for most of the remainder of the building.

"We felt the park would attract these kind of companies," Aguer said. "It has great exposure on the freeway, plus the Panattoni name attracts high-quality corporations across the country ... companies like Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon.com.

"The economy supposedly is slowing down, but we're not seeing it out there. We are continuing to see good leasing activity."

Robert Roe of the Staubach Co. in Cleveland represented The Hartford.

Aguer said Panattoni plans to break ground within a couple of weeks on two more 64,000-square-foot buildings in the park.

Gold Pointe is designed for about 385,000 square feet of offices, not including the Health Net data center that was the first building on the 28-acre site.

Foundation Health Corp. -- now Health Net Inc. -- originally planned to develop a half-million-square-foot headquarters campus at Gold Pointe. That plan was put on hold after Foundation's 80,000-square-foot data center opened in 1995 and the remaining land was sold to Panattoni.

Though the data center technically is not part of Gold Pointe, Aguer said Panattoni is making sure his business park blends with Health Net's project. Hilton Williams of Forrar Williams Architects of Sacramento -- who designed the data center and the rest of the proposed campus -- also is designing Gold Pointe.