Thomas Breen file photo
300 George, walking off the tax rolls.
More than $56 million in assessed real estate value has disappeared from New Haven’s tax rolls more than a year after Yale purchased the med-tech complex at 300 George St.
It will take 13 years for the city to feel that revenue hit — even if the university stands to reap the full benefits of the property’s partial tax exemption in the long run.
At a Friday press conference introducing his proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, Mayor Justin Elicker referenced a recent change to the tax status of 300 George St. when responding to a question about why New Haven’s taxable grand list dropped slightly since last year.
He noted that, after Yale purchased the lab-office building from an affiliate of Winstanley Enterprises in December 2023 for $139.6 million, the university has now moved roughly three quarters of that property to a tax-exempt use. (The building is occupied primarily by Yale and Yale New Haven Hospital.)
That means that $56,812,998 in city-assessed value at 300 George is currently tax exempt, while $19,719,823 of the property’s city-assessed value is still taxable.
A Yale spokesperson said that the university is currently using portions of 300 George “as a research facility for various academic disciplines under the School of Medicine. Examples of the disciplines working at 300 George include Immunobiology, Psychiatry, Neurology, Bioinformatics, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, and the Yale Cancer Center.”
What does this tax-status change mean for the property tax revenue the city will collect for 300 George?
It’s complicated.
For the next three years, Yale will pay the equivalent of full local taxes on the property.
At the mayor’s proposed new mill rate of 39.40, the annual taxes owed for 300 George would be $3,015,393.
If the property’s assessed value and the city’s mill rate stay exactly the same for the following 12 years, then Yale’s annual tax payment for 300 George would drop from $3,015,393 to $776,961, or by around $2.2 million.
Why is that?
Because of the terms of a city-Yale deal that the Board of Alders approved in April 2022. That agreement requires Yale to pay 100 percent of taxes for newly exempt properties for three years, and then 10 percent less for each year after that. By year 13, Yale would owe no local taxes on the tax-exempt portion of the property.
In an interview with the Independent soon after Yale bought 300 George, Elicker argued that the city would actually receive more revenue from Yale, at least in the short term, if the university decided to take it off the tax rolls. That’s because the city would receive a roughly 50 percent reimbursement from the state through the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program for the tax-exempt portion of 300 George, even as Yale paid all — and then part of — the property’s local taxes for 13 years.
“Of course, after year 13, we will only receive the PILOT funds,” Elicker said at the time.“But we’re not comparing this with a world where Yale doesn’t purchase properties. We’re comparing this with a world where Yale” does continue to expand, as it did before this deal was in place and as it will likely continue to do.
City spokesperson Lenny Speiller said that the current city-Yale deal spans through Fiscal Year 2026 – 27 (FY27), which is when Yale’s $10 million annual boost to its voluntary payments to the city steps down to $2 million.