$1M vacant Hartford office tower sale looms
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In August, a Cromwell commercial investor announced it signed a purchase-contract to acquire a state-owned skyscraper in Hartford at 25 Sigourney St. for $1 million.
A $1 million cash sale is pending on the state-owned skyscraper overlooking the Interstate 84 viaduct in Hartford that once housed several state offices before water leaks and mold forced them to abandon it, the state says.
Cromwell commercial investor William Coons III and his Spartan Towers LLC unit inked a purchase-contract with the state July 30 for the 15-story, 25 Sigourney St. office tower, Coons and the state Department of Administrative Services (DAS) confirmed Wednesday. DAS oversees the purchase, sale and maintenance of state taxpayer-owned assets.
As of the 2019 grand list, the city assessed the value of the property at $18.9 million.
One major benefit from the tower’s pending sale is that it would resort to private hands, thus returning it to the city’s taxable-property rolls. Most municipal-owned real estate in Connecticut is exempt from property taxes.
Coons, whose realty holdings including New Britain’s revamped, fully leased 1 Herald Square, the New Britain Herald's former home, said Wednesday the 467,000-square-foot tower will stay office space.
He said he is recruiting from among commercial brokers, including CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield, to find one or more “big-block tenants’’ who will occupy 50,000 square feet or more in the skyscraper.
Coons said the tower’s well-publicized problems are behind it. He said he has professional certifications that the building’s leaky windows and mold have been resolved.
Still, renovating the building’s interior-exterior, he said, including reconfiguring its interior layout to accommodate office tenants, will require a huge investment.
“It’s probably a $30 million-plus project …,’’ he said. “The bones of the building are fantastic.”
As for the crumbling garage, Coons said it’s possible the expense to remedy its woes may be too great to salvage it.
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.
Until the sale closes, Coons has agreed to reimburse the state an unrefundable $25,000 per month to cover the building’s operating expenses: utilities; security; among other costs.
DAS announced in Aug. 2018 that the building was being offered “as is,’’ and that any sale proceeds would go into the state’s General Fund. DAS said then the tower will need a complete interior renovation and a rebuild of the crumbling pre-cast concrete garage.
Coons’ was one of three offers to purchase the building, a DAS official said.
The building opened in 1984 to house commercial tenants, including Xerox Corp.’s regional copier-office equipment sales and customer-service teams.
The state bought 25 Sigourney in 1994 and, until early 2017 when it was fully vacated, housed the state Department of Revenue Services, among other state agencies. The state tax collector is now housed in downtown Hartford’s state-owned 450 Columbus Blvd. twin office towers.
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Wonderful,Coons will have this place humming inside a year.
Corrupticut can't do anything right,but this is a slight improvement.
What did the state pay in 1995 and who did they buy it from?
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