The soon-to-be owner/developer of a state-owned skyscraper in Hartford is seeking a 10-year tax abatement on the property that was abandoned two years ago due to water leaks and mold.
Hartford’s city council is scheduled Monday to vote on a resolution that would allow the city to enter into a 10-year tax assessment fixing agreement with Cromwell commercial realty investor William Coons III and his Spartan Towers LLC unit, which is in the process of acquiring the 15-story tower at 25 Sigourney St. for $1 million in cash.
Under private ownership, the pending sale of the state-owned tower means the Sigourney Street property would return to the city’s taxable-property rolls.
According to the proposed abatement, the agreement would fix the assessed value of the property to guarantee it yields a property tax commencing in the 2019 grand list (spanning from July 2020 to Jan. 2021) of $175,000 in the first four years; $200,000 in years five to seven; and $225,000 in years eight to 10.
That would result in more than $1.9 million in tax revenue over a 10-year period.
Mayor Luke Bronin in a letter to the council said the tax abatement is being proposed “to ensure the property is economically viable going forward and will provide the city revenue.”
Coons, one of three developers that offered to purchase the building, previously said he plans to maintain the 467,000-square-foot tower as office space when he is done investing more than $30 million to reconfigure and renovate the site.
He’s seeking at least one major tenant to occupy 50,000 square feet or more in the skyscraper, overlooking the I-84 viaduct in Hartford.
City records show that Spartan will either rehabilite or demolish the adjacent four-story parking garage at a cost of about $7.5 million.
To mitigate those costs, Coons inserted a condition in the purchase-contract, which expires at year-end, that the city must abate an unspecified amount of the property-tax bill for the tower and garage.
Before the sale closes, Coons agreed to reimburse the state an unrefundable $25,000 per month to cover the building’s operating expenses: utilities; security; among other costs.
In Aug. 2018, the state Department of Administrative Services (DAS), which oversees the purchase, sale and maintenance of state taxpayer-owned assets, said it was offering the building “as is” and that the sale proceeds would be put into the state’s General Fund.
The tower debuted in 1984 to house commercial tenants such as Xerox Corp.’s regional copier-office equipment sales and customer-service teams.
The state acquired the tower in 1994 for $42.6 million, and various state agencies fully vacated the site in 2017 because of mold and poor indoor air quality.
As of the 2019 grand list, the city assessed the value of the property at $18.9 million.
