The former World Wrestling Entertainment headquarters, a glass-walled landmark along busy Interstate 95 in Stamford, is on track to be renovated into apartments.
The building was known for decades as the home of the company that made Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and John Cena into household names, but the WWE relocated two years ago to a larger space in Stamford, and a developer now intends to retrofit it as 84 luxury apartments with six reserved to lease at “affordable” rates.
City planning officials are still reviewing plans submitted by MB Financial Group, a Branford-based real estate investment and development company that’s involved with more than 10 major projects in Connecticut.
An MB Financial unit called 1241 E. Main St. Associates LLC bought the building for $3.75 million last Christmas Eve, according to city records. It has stood vacant since, but MB has indicated the conversion could be done as early as mid-2027 if it is authorized.
Fairfield County drivers have associated the Titan Towers building with the world of professional wrestling for decades, starting in 1991 when the WWE — then known as the WWF or World Wrestling Federation — acquired it as its global base.
The six-story office tower has floors of parking topped by four floors of offices, and was home to an insurance company and various other tenants after it was built in 1981. It became a landmark a decade later when the then-WWF bought it.
The company positioned its popular logo facing the highway from the top of the building, promoting wresting in the midst of the company’s “golden era” under owner Vince McMahon Jr. Cable pay-per-view shows were cutting edge at the time, and WrestleMania and other initiatives by McMahon made the company millions.
McMahon teamed with former wrestlers Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon as hosts of a weekly wrestling program that drew huge audiences, partly because of their comedic interplay. Characters like The Big Boss Man, The Undertaker, Jake The Snake Roberts were among the comic book-style heroes and villains of the wrestling world at the time.
The company was also rocked in the early 1990s by a scandal involving its role in wrestlers getting health-jeopardizing quantities of steroids. Netflix last year put out a powerful documentary about that era and McMahon’s control of the brand that came to be worth billions.
MB Financial’s plan is to do away with about two-thirds of the office building’s parking and create one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments along with extensive amenity spaces including a large outdoor pool.
The six affordable units would be priced to tenants earning up to half of the region’s average median income. MB’s proposal indicates that would work out now to $1,462 a month for a family of three. The company proposes a lottery to choose the six families that would get the space.
MB Financial’s portfolio includes The Lofts at 250 Greene, an upscale apartment complex in New Haven, along with three major historic building renovations in Bridgeport. Last spring, the company bought the vacant 65-acre MassMutual campus in Enfield for $4 million with plans for an elaborate residential complex.