UConn’s Board of Trustees has unanimously approved an option agreement to sell 105 acres in the southwest portion of the school’s Mansfield Depot Campus to a private company that would use it as the region’s first-ever connected and autonomous vehicle test track and research facility.
Under the option agreement – if all steps and zoning approvals are met – UConn would sell the property to Promesa Capital LLC for $5 million.
Promesa Capital is a limited liability company formed in 2021 by Steve Cortese, who lists a Guilford business and home address.
Under the plan, Promesa Capital would use its own money to fund construction of the roughly $30 million autonomous vehicle test track facility, which it has named Spectrum Park. UConn – and other entities – would use the property for different purposes. UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said the university would make the property a “research center for next generation transportation planning.”
The Hartford Business Journal reported in 2020 that UConn administrators were mulling a proposal to transform UConn’s Depot Campus — and the site of the abandoned Bergin Prison across the street, which the state donated to the university — into a 100- to 200-acre autonomous-vehicle testing facility that would include roads, building facades, styrofoam dummies and other items to test driverless cars’ safety on roadways.
Reitz said the site was selected because it’s close enough to other parts of UConn Storrs and Depot Campus for easy access for researchers, but remote enough that the facility could be designed and operated in a way that would be unobtrusive.
The option gives Promesa nine months, and four possible extensions, to review the site’s suitability, conduct various testing and reviews and seek zoning approvals with the town of Mansfield.
Promesa Capital’s principal Steve Cortese told the Hartford Business Journal that “it is our intention to create a state-of-the-art environment where the best and brightest can work together to solve the problems facing mobility. It is our goal that this work results in safer roads and highways, thus reducing injuries and deaths.”
