The Hartford Group Closes Simsbury Campus, Consolidates

by Jeremy Fisette
DTHartford Staff

      The Hartford Group, the largest Connecticut insurance company, announced plans recently to move out of and sell their Simsbury campus. This move will leave only the Windsor and downtown Hartford campuses, which according to spokesperson Thomas Hambrick will be enough.

      “We have plenty of space here for any future growth of the business,” Hambrick said. Even after the many recent business and campus sales (Southington and Farmington have also been sold in the near past), Hambrick explained, “We’re still going to have a definite presence here.”

        Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman said that it is a “devastating decision for the town [of Simsbury].” As First Selectman, Glassman exhibits the general powers of a mayor (as some New England towns do not have a mayoral position). According to Glassman, The Hartford’s presence in Simsbury provided a large chunk of the town’s annual income. “Simsbury’s budget is $18 million,” Glassman said, and The Hartford provided $1.6 in property and real estate tax revenues.

        Glassman went on to describe the other losses the town is currently facing, such as the loss of jobs and Hartford employees’ business at Simsbury small businesses, as well as the proposed removal of the car tax the town currently instates, which would cut another $6 million in annual tax revenue.
        “That’s roughly one third of our budget; a significant impact on the town.” Glassman said, concerned. However, Glassman and the town is “working on creative ways to track new business,” and hope that plans for road creation and tax incentives will help alleviate and counteract this loss.

         So why the move? “Over the last few years we’ve sold several of our businesses. As a result, we are more focused,” Hambrick elucidated. We reviewed the needs of our ongoing businesses and decided that our Hartford campus and our Windsor campus were the right fit for our company going forward.”

         And speaking of the Windsor campus, that one is actually fairly new. “We built it with an eye towards [sic] sustainability,” Hambrick said. The facility comes equipped with “sun-controlled architectural elements,” and “high-efficiency cooling an dheating system.” Hambrick uttered more than once that the company has been trying to “consolidate our footprint.”

          There will be no loss of jobs in the closing of the Simsbury campus, which will move every one of the 1,500 Simsbury employees to either the Hartford (which already has 4,100 employees) or Windsor campus. “We went back to our real estate consolidation plan,” Hambrick says. That is the reason the company “decided to move our employees and sell the building.”

         Also, the company would like to reassure that they are not trying to sell the Simsbury campus just for the sake of selling it. Instead, they “remain focused on finding an attractive buyer for the community,” said Alan Kreczko, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at The Hartford in a press conference last week. “We are pleased with the Town of Simsbury’s partnership in marketing the facility.”

       The Hartford Insurance Group’s move out of Simsbury definitely has some repercussions of the town, but Glassman is hopeful that this substantial loss can be counteracted. As for The Hartford, they are still going strong, and Hambrick is confident this will be the last act of downsizing the company will need in order to reduce their footprint while also remaining highly efficient and dependable as a business. The move will be completed within the next two years.