Continuing its recent wave of real estate consolidation, Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. announced Wednesday that it will close and sell its Simsbury campus, and move about 1,500 employees to its Hartford and Windsor locations.
The move will take place over the next two years, Hartford Financial spokesman Thomas Hambrick said, and is in line with the company’s strategy in recent years to consolidate and sell off its real estate.
The Hartford has recently sold properties in Farmington and Southington as well, and is in the process of selling its Hartford office at 55 Farmington Ave. to the state of Connecticut.
The Simsbury campus closing will impact about 1,500 employees, who will be moved to the company’s Hartford and Windsor offices, Hambrick said.
The Hartford owns over 170 acres in the sprawling Simsbury campus, including its four-story, 600,000 square foot office building, which has housed its life insurance business.
In the early 1980s, then ITT-Hartford Group Inc. paid Simsbury $1.3 million for 173 acres in the town’s southern end, near the Avon border, and sank an estimated $100 million more to build and outfit what was a remote and secure backup data-processing center.
