Ideanomics’ lofty vision now a blur
Unanswered questions, contaminated campus remain
WEST HARTFORD — Two years ago the financial technology company Ideanomics, then called Seven Stars Cloud, charged into Connecticut with promises of a new life for the contaminated former UConn campus in West Hartford.
The company described a vision of a thriving technology hub, more than 300 new jobs and a mixed-use space that would not only invigorate the neighborhood, but boost the state’s high-tech profile. State officials, including then-Gov. Dannel Malloy, heralded the vision as a new incarnation of the campus and a step forward for the entire state.
The optimism proved premature. For nearly two years, the company set deadlines for groundbreakings that came and went. It promised to file plans that never materialized. It made little progress on remediating the PCBladen property and still hasn’t submitted a full cleanup plan to environmental regulatory agencies.
Since 2018, the only visible changes at the 58-acre property are the demolition of one building and the addition of chain link fences and knee-high grass.
“Obviously this is not the expectation that the town had — that a developer would come in and the rate of the remediation go so slowly and the property not be maintained to our standards,” said West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor. “That’s frustrating to everybody.”
And now, Ideanomics has finally admitted that its socalled Fintech Village isn’t likely to happen. In a March filing, Ideanomics listed the property as a “non-core asset.” Contractors have filed more than $4.6 million in liens against the property for unpaid bills — close to the $5.2 million price tag for the site.
“We don’t know exactly what their plans are, but it appears they are not in a position to develop Fintech Village anytime soon,” said West Hartford town manager Matt Hart.
The town of West Hartford had no say in the property’s sale to Ideanomics. But now, with UConn having moved its satellite campus to Hartford and Ideanomics all but gone, the town is stuck with a contaminated eyesore.
For years, toxic PCBs were leaching into the soil from the buildings on the UConn campus but — after two years of virtually no progress toward remediating the pollution — the town still has no clear sense of the extent of the property’s toxicity or the damage it may be causing to nearby properties.
Red flags
When Ideanomics announced in 2018 its intention to buy the former UConn campus, which is bordered by Asylum Avenue and Trout Brook Drive, the company described plans to create a vibrant technology center. It was a lofty but welcome vision — by then, UConn had already vacated the campus, and the town had decided not to purchase the polluted property.
Not only was Ideanomics pledging to clean up the contaminated property, it was promising to make it a destination of the kind not seen anywhere else in the state.
“We were excited about the vision,” Hart said. “It was exciting to think about the potential.”
At the time, Ideanomics had a different name: Seven Stars Cloud Group. The ever-shifting company has had three names in the past three years, and three CEOs in the past two years.
In 2018, chairman and then-CEO Bruno Wu outlined a plan to invest $283 million into creating a tech hub that would draw companies from around the world. He promised innovative technology development and more than 300 new jobs. He said in a statement at the time that the company was developing “a project that the entire town can embrace.”
Under Ideanomics’ plan, $10 million would come from the state of Connecticut, under Malloy’s sometimes-controversial First Five Plus program. That program is administered by the state Department of Economic and Community Development, which is now headed by Commissioner David Lehman.
“The vision was quite ambitious and really interesting and transformational,” Lehman said.
Lehman was not the commissioner when the deal with Ideanomics was made, but he said he’s familiar with the project and has worked with Ideanomics more recently.
But even before the $5.2 million property sale was finalized, there were red flags.
In the summer of 2018, the company said it would meet with West Hartford officials by late July to discuss the project. By September 2018, that meeting still hadn’t happened. And Wu initially said he planned to open some parts of the campus by September or October of that year, but the property sale wasn’t even finalized until that October.
After the sale was finalized, Ideanomics representatives did begin meeting with town officials — but still didn’t file development plans for the site. Instead of formal filings, the company released a flashy, professionally produced virtual tour in July 2019. The tour showcased a sparkling vision of Fintech Village, which by then had ballooned to a $400 million project.
“Starting today, we take our largest step from blueprint to reality,” Wu said at the video release.
But — a full year after announcing its plans for the property — the company still hadn’t actually filed blueprints with the town of West Hartford. Ideanomics representatives said at that late-July unveiling that the company would file formal plans within the week.
Nearly a year later, the town still hasn’t received any plans, according to Town Planner Todd Dumais.
A polluted site
Before Ideanomics could execute its vision, the company had to clean up years of contamination leaking from the aging academic buildings.
Although the cleanup oversight technically falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that agency said that it partnered with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection on the project.
DEEP officials Lori Saliby and Gary Trombly, who both work with PCBs and worked specifically on the Fintech Village project, said the first step in this type of remediation is the submission of investigation plans. These plans outline the steps a company will take or has taken to assess the full extent of a property’s contamination. Only once the extent of the contamination is fully understood can a company submit an actual remediation plan.
For the Fintech Village property, DEEP received a few investigation plans, including for three of the site’s five buildings and for the soil and hardscape. With DEEP approval, Ideanomics moved forward with the demolition of one of the site’s buildings, the social work building, in November 2019. The company also removed asbestos from the site in May.
But DEEP had “data gap” concerns about the plans for the two other buildings and the soil and hardscape, Trombly said. DEEP relayed the concerns in fall 2019 for one of the plans, in January for the second plan and in February for the third plan. Ideanomics never responded, Trombly and Saliby said.
Ideanomics also never submitted investigation plans for several other site components, including the drainage system and off-site impacts of the property’s contamination.
Saliby said DEEP didn’t set any filing or action deadlines that Ideanomics needed to reach during the remediation process. But the company would talk about wanting progress, and then wouldn’t follow through, she said.
“They would indicate that they would want to move quickly … but then things didn’t materialize,” Saliby said. “What was happening wasn’t really matching up with what we were hearing.”
Alf Poor, the Ideanomics CEO, said through a spokesperson that the company has so far invested more than $10 million into the site. He did not specify if that amount included the $4.6 million in liens that contractors have filed for unpaid bills.
According to an online database, the company has also paid its 2019 property tax bill of $448,604.
But within the larger picture of work needed at the site, Salibuy said Ideanomics didn’t make much of a dent.
“The project is closer to the beginning than it is the end,” she said.
Poor said through a spokesperson that the company still plans to fully clean up the site. But he added that could either mean the company cleans the site before selling it, or sells it to another owner who plans to clean it.
“The site will be fully cleaned up,” Poor wrote. “This is a big positive for whichever route the closing out of the remediation takes.”
‘We need to move quickly’
On paper, the state has a $10 million stake in Fintech Village. When it sold the property, the state agreed to provide Ideanomics with a loan that, contingent on certain job creation requirements, could be converted into a grant.
But in reality, the state never gave any of that money to the company, according to Lehman, the DECD commissioner. In order to receive the funds, Ideanomics had to at least begin construction on the site, Lehman said. Alternately, the company could have provided a letter of credit to draw on the funds earlier, but Lehman said Ideanomics didn’t do that either.
“Because construction never started and the jobs were never created, the money never went out the door,” he said.
Poor said the project fell through because the company wasn’t able to take developers’ interest in the property and translate that to actual financial investment. And while the company claimed to be focused on artificial intelligence and blockchain at the time, Poor says the company is now shifting focus to its electric vehicle division.
“Essentially our electric vehicle business is growing very quickly and our fintech services business is not showing the same growth,” Poor said. “Things have changed a great deal since 2016 when we first looked at the [West Hartford] property.”
But two recent reports from short-selling firms J Capital Research and Hindenburg Research question whether Ideanomics’ electric vehicle business is as profitable as the company claims — or if that division’s much-touted sales center even exists. The company has denied some of those claims, while leaving others unaddressed.
With the state apparently off the hook for both the property and the funds, the caretaking responsibilities fall instead to Ideanomics. But from the town of West Hartford’s perspective, Ideanomics has abdicated its responsibility to keep the land in reasonable condition, spurring the town to take up that responsibility.
At the end of June, the West Hartford town council agreed to mow the property at its own cost, in exchange for a six-month right of first refusal on any sale of the property.
“The condition of the property is absolutely unacceptable,” said Cantor, the town’s mayor. “This is obviously not a priority for them so we came to an agreement with them that we would maintain the property.”
At the June meeting, the council set aside about $40,000 for exterior maintenance of the property. The council also set aside an additional $150,000 for anticipated legal and appraisal costs as the town explores the possibility of buying the site.
Although the site is polluted and overgrown, Hart, the town manager, said it’s still “such a visible and important property to the town.” Both Hart and Cantor said they could see numerous possible uses for the parcels, including recreational, private development or affordable housing uses.
Because of that, the town is now once again thinking about buying the property. And Poor said in a recent statement that he thinks the town “would be excellent custodians of the site.”
But two and a half years after deciding the property was just too much work for the town to take on, West Hartford is left to grapple with the question: Has enough changed for the town to buy it now?
The town is hoping that, at the very least, Ideanomics will provide them with more information about the property. For now, town staff are working to collect as many answers as possible, so the town council can make an informed decision.
West Hartford only has about six months before Ideanomics could sell to another buyer without first asking the town.
“We need to move quickly. Six months is not that long of a period of time,” Hart said. “I’m hopeful that two, three months from now, we know a lot more and are in a position where we can make an offer or not.”