Image courtesy of Ideanomics

The long collapse of plans for a “fintech village” on the site of a former college campus in West Hartford finally reached its end yesterday.

A Delaware LLC, West Hartford 1, bought the 58-acre property at 1700 and 1800 Asylum Ave. for $2.75 million from New York City-based Ideonomics on Dec. 29, according to public records. The seller had retained Colliers International to market the property in September of last year.

Ideanomics bought the property – once home to a UConn commuter campus – for $5.2 million in October 2018 and promised local residents and officials a $238 million redevelopment that would transform the property into an innovation hub for companies in the artificial intelligence, fintech, robotics and related industries.

The project, however, quickly fizzled after the company discovered extensive environmental contamination on the site and ran into troubles of its own. Founded in China as a video-on-demand service called “Seven Stars Cloud,” the company became involved in oil trading and consumer electronics before pivoting to focus on financial technology in 2017 and becoming the target of an investor lawsuit in 2019. The company now markets itself as a lessor of electric buses and other heavy-duty commercial vehicles.

The future of the Asylum Avenue property is unclear. West Hartford 1 LLC is not currently registered in the state’s corporation database, so its owners are unknown, and a brief press release Ideanomics sent to local media outlets did not further identify the buyer nor their plans. The Hartford Courant reports that local officials believe multifamily development may be part of future redevelopment plans.