Ideanomics sues W. Hartford over property tax assessment

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For the second time in two years, the value of UConn’s former West Hartford campus is being challenged, this time by the financial-technology company planning to build a $400 million mixed-use development at the 58-acre site.

In Feb. 2018, UConn appealed West Hartford’s $24 million assessed value of its shuttered campus site that the town once planned to buy. At the time, UConn, which does not pay property taxes because it is a public institution, said it was appealing the tax assessment to preserve any buyer’s future right to do the same. 

UConn last fall sold the campus and its five buildings on Asylum Avenue and Trout Brook Drive to Ideanomics for $5.2 million. The company, which has offices in China and New York, now plans to build a sprawling “Fintech Village” on the site.

In late May this year, Ideanomics quietly sued the town in New Britain Superior Court, opposing the West Hartford assessor’s $21.9 million assessment of the campus. 

That assessment resulted after the town valued the property at $31.4 million during a 2016 revaluation, court records said. The assessed value, which is used by municipalities to determine property tax bills, equals 70 percent of a property’s market value. 

UConn was still occupying the campus at the time of the 2016 revaluation. The state’s flagship state university, based in Storrs, moved its West Hartford campus to Hartford in Sept. 2017.

Ideanomics in a court filing said the $21.9 million assessment was “grossly excessive, disproportionate and unlawful.”

Based on West Hartford’s 2019-2020 mill rate of 41.8, Ideanomics would owe about $918,834 in property taxes this fiscal year.

Ideanomics CEO and President Alfred “Alf” Poor told the Hartford Business Journal on Monday that the assessment was “complicated” for the town given that it’s the first time the property is being placed on the tax rolls.

“This is nothing other than a statistical transaction,” Poor said, likening his company’s tax appeal to that of a homeowner in town. “Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to.”

West Hartford Mayor Sharon Cantor on Monday said she could not comment on pending litigation.

The company’s tax appeal was filed days before Poor told vendors in an email in early June that he suspended “all activities” at the so-called “Fintech Village” in West Hartford amid “regrettable and unreconcilable differences with the State of Connecticut.” 

Ideanomics announced days later it was able to reach an accord with Gov. Ned Lamont’s office related to environmental cleanup of the site. 

Meantime, Ideanomics last week unveiled renderings of its planned sprawling West Hartford project — previously estimated at $283 million — showing an art gallery, wetlands park walkway, community center, civic plaza and space for Ideanomics and other tech companies.

Asbestos cleanup began at the site last week, and is expected to take three months. The company also plans to raze four of five buildings on the campus as part of its plans to remediate the site.

Ideanomics has not yet submitted site plan proposals with the town, which would need to approve the blueprints in addition to a rezoning of the property before construction begins.

The development is being seeded through a $10 million pledge from the state in exchange for 330 jobs Ideanomics promised to create.