Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam is urging state lawmakers to allow the city to postpone its next property revaluation by one year, warning that current market conditions could shift more of the tax burden from commercial property owners to residents.
The Democratic mayor said that risk is driven by weakening office values and rising residential property prices in Hartford, where the tax base has long depended on commercial buildings.
“Look, you’re seeing this all over the state, but as housing prices continue to climb, the value of housing continues to climb,” Arulampalam said. “The differential between commercial and residential property values is made really difficult … in a number of cities where the tax burden is shifting from commercial to residential taxpayers.”
Hartford’s exposure to that shift is particularly acute, he said, given the size of its struggling office market, which has faced post-pandemic headwinds as companies continue to embrace hybrid work models that reduce demand for office space.
“We’ve got more commercial office space than New Haven, Bridgeport and Waterbury combined, which means that residential property taxpayers in Hartford would foot a disproportional amount of the burden in this market from a reval,” he said.
Under Connecticut law, municipalities must reassess real estate values every five years. Arulampalam’s administration is seeking permission from the General Assembly to delay Hartford’s next revaluation by one year, a move that would also require City Council approval.
A bill enabling the delay passed unanimously out of the legislature’s Planning and Development Committee on March 13.
If approved, the delay would push updated property values into tax bills beginning Oct. 1, 2027. Arulampalam said the extra time could help cushion the impact on homeowners and small businesses, while giving the city more time to add new housing and stabilize its office sector.
The request comes as Hartford’s residential and commercial real estate markets have been moving in opposite directions.
Hartford’s office market continues to struggle with high vacancies, which limits rental income and puts downward pressure on building values. A year-end 2025 report by Cushman & Wakefield found a 31.9% vacancy rate across 7.6 million square feet of office space in the central business district, as tenants gave back a net 204,226 square feet of occupied space during the year.
At the same time, home prices have risen sharply. The median sales price of a house in Hartford in 2021 — the year that set the basis for the last revaluation — was $188,500, according to the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors. In 2025, the median sale price was $230,000, a nearly 30% increase.
Delicate balance
The potential revaluation delay caught some industry observers by surprise and has drawn mixed reactions from commercial real estate stakeholders.
Jane Davey, head of acquisitions for LAZ Investments, a local investor and part owner of the 26-story Gold Building in downtown Hartford, said she has no strong preference on whether the revaluation proceeds this year. However, she noted that commercial property owners have had success appealing assessments following the last revaluation, with some cases taking years to resolve.
“I think there’s always a risk the city will set a value we don’t agree with,” she said. “I look at it and see there certainly hasn’t been an uptick in value.”
In 2022, LAZ and its investment partner, Shelbourne Global Solutions, appealed the $55.77 million market value assigned to the Gold Building. In 2024, the city agreed to a settlement that reduced the valuation to $48 million through the next revaluation cycle.
Earlier this year, LAZ and Shelbourne also won a tax appeal for a 53,531-square-foot, six-story office building at 15 Lewis St., reducing its assessed value by about 35%, from $1.9 million to $1.23 million.
MetroHartford Alliance CEO David Griggs acknowledged there is a delicate balance between commercial property owners’ desire for fair tax valuations and ensuring the city’s fiscal stability. While a delay would allow stakeholders more time to plan, he expressed skepticism that market conditions could shift meaningfully in a single year.
“It gives us a hot second to try to plan a little bit more, to try to have the market conditions change, although how much they’re going to change inside a year is tough,” Griggs said.
He remained optimistic about the city’s development prospects, pointing to multiple hotel proposals and efforts to convert additional downtown office space into apartments.
“Maybe in a year we’ll have a little better vision into our future than we do today,” he said.
Meanwhile, the city has already begun accounting for declining office values. Under Arulampalam’s direction, Hartford set aside $7.3 million from a budget surplus in late 2024 to offset expected losses in property tax revenue.
Revitalization efforts
To address those pressures, city officials are pursuing multiple strategies to expand housing supply and reposition underused commercial properties — moves the mayor said could help stabilize housing costs and the city’s tax base over time.
Arulampalam estimated these efforts could add thousands of housing units over the next five years.
“It is something that we are actively working to do, to convert commercial buildings into residential to build more housing units to try to help stabilize the housing market in the city,” he said. “I believe that we can make a really significant impact. There are cities that have been able to bend the cost curve on housing by building far more units, places like Austin and Minneapolis. And we’re following that model.”
Initiatives include office-to-residential conversions, development of vacant lots for homeownership, and housing construction beyond downtown.
“There’s a dual impact,” the mayor said. “I think it helps stabilize the value of housing. It helps stabilize the value of the commercial properties if we can start to convert enough of them into residential. And it also expands the property tax base by bringing new units online that were not part of the equation before.”
Hartford is collaborating with partners — including the state Department of Economic and Community Development and Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) — to identify opportunities to convert vacant commercial properties into housing. Since its creation in 2012, CRDA has used state bond funding to provide low-interest loans supporting about 3,400 apartments in Hartford, including 830 currently under construction.
Projects adding another 750 units are under consideration for CRDA support.
The city is also exploring use of a $50 million “greyfields” grant fund authorized by state lawmakers last year to redevelop obsolete office and retail properties.
Meanwhile, some of the city’s top corporate leaders are advancing a broader revitalization effort through a “Vision Committee” led by Christopher Swift, chairman and CEO of The Hartford. The group has retained global planning firm Streetsense to help prioritize redevelopment initiatives, with a report expected in June.
Streetsense Managing Director Larisa Ortiz said the city needs roughly 10,000 additional downtown residents to support retail, restaurants and potentially a grocery store. How many can be added will depend in part on an ongoing city-funded study examining vacant or underused office space and its potential for conversion to housing, hotels or other uses.
A separate 2025 study by Econsult Solutions Inc., funded by LAZ Investments and Shelbourne in coordination with the MetroHartford Alliance, underscored the decline in downtown office values.
It recommended $450 million in state incentives over three years to stabilize and convert struggling properties, noting that 41% of office space is currently available or soon will be, with four office towers in receivership and millions in lost tax revenue.
