Business: Bedroom to Board Room

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Headquarters—and headaches—in suburbia

When a big company packs up and flees Manhattan's high taxes and other irritations, where is it most likely to move its headquarters? The answer, surprisingly, is not some place in the Sunbelt but just 30 miles or so away, Connecticut's Fairfieid County. Long famed as tony bedroom communities for high-paid commuters to the corporate canyons of New York City, such towns as Greenwich, Darien and Westport have become boardroom communities for many of those same bosses: they have brought their offices closer to their homes.

In 1968 Fairfield County was the headquarters for only four companies on the FORTUNE 500 list. Now there are 24, tying Fairfield with Chicago for second place, behind New York City (82), as a corporate address. Before long the county will move ahead of Chicago: Union Carbide, the Continental Group Inc. (formerly Continental Can) and Singer Co. have announced plans to move in.

The chief boon for the companies has been higher productivity. Staffers are still close enough to Manhattan to run in for a Broadway play but are spared the drudgery of daily commuting. They no longer wander in late because of railroad tie-ups, and they tend to stay to clean up the day's work rather than flee at the stroke of 5 p.m. to catch the next train. Some firms have even been able to lengthen their formal work week. The Olin Corp., whose 1969 move from Manhattan to Stamford led off the exodus to Fairfield County, cut its lunch period from one hour to half an hour; Union Carbide, which now works its employees seven hours a day in New York City, will adopt an eight-hour day next year when it moves to a site near Danbury.

The firms report that their shift to suburbia has also made it easier to recruit executives from other parts of the country. Champion International relocated in Stamford (pop. 108,000) partly because it wanted to bring in managers from Cincinnati and St. Paul, Minn., and found that many resisted a move to New York. Similarly, Union Carbide Executive James C. Rowland cites "Middle America attitudes" about city problems as a reason for that company's move to Danbury (pop. 60,000). Says he: "We think Danbury will always be more like the area that we are recruiting people from."

Fully half the companies that have moved to the county have settled in Stamford, which has changed from a dingy factory town into a showcase for imaginative corporate architecture. General Telephone & Electronics occupies a striking tower, shaped like an inverted pyramid, that has helped to transform a once decaying downtown section. Champion International's offices in the 21-story Landmark Tower overlook buildings forming a complex that includes a sunken plaza used for tennis in the summer, skating in the winter. Continental Oil, Xerox, Texasgulf and General Signal are in High Ridge Park, which, with six modern buildings set on 40 acres of lawns and woodlands, is an archetypal corporate "campus."