Assessor: Yale-Owned Prospect House Is Actually Still On Tax Rolls

by Thomas Breen

Acting City Assessor Alex Pullen told the Independent on Wednesday that a Yale-owned single-family house at 282 Prospect St. is still on the city’s tax rolls. For now.

During his annual grand-list-update presentation to the Board of Alders Finance Committee earlier this month, Pullen said that Yale has newly moved two university-owned properties off the tax rolls. He told the committee that those newly tax-exempt properties constitute roughly $2.6 million in city-assessed value.

In response to follow-up questions from the Independent, Pullen said that those two Yale properties are located at 53 Broadway and 282 Prospect.

The Broadway property, formerly home to Newman Architects’ office, is now studio space for Yale undergraduate art students. The single-family house at 282 Prospect, meanwhile, is now vacant, and used to be the residence of retired Yale Associate Vice President Bruce Alexander.

The city last appraised 282 Prospect for tax purposes as worth $1,157,800; that means its assessed value — or 70 percent of its appraisal — is $810,460. Yale paid a total of $31,932.12 in real estate taxes on the property this fiscal year.

A Yale spokesperson acknowledged a request for comment — but did not respond to the Independent’s questions about 53 Broadway and 282 Prospect — before the publication of a Friday, March 13 article about those two properties leaving the city’s tax rolls.

Five days later, on Wednesday, Pullen emailed the Independent with an update.

He said that his office received a call from Yale after the publication of the Independent’s March 13 article.

Pullen said that, while Yale did initially ask in its annual letter to the city’s assessor’s office for 282 Prospect to be made tax-exempt, “they followed up later with a phone call and email explaining that while 282 Prospect had been assigned to the office of the Provost for University use, ‘it had not yet been converted for its intended purpose and would remain taxable until it is converted and occupied.’”

Pullen said that Yale had communicated that change to someone else in his office; however, that change was not communicated to him directly, thus his mistake in telling the Independent last week that 282 Prospect was being taken off the tax rolls.

Pullen said that the assessor’s office has since made the correction “to place the property [282 Prospect] on the taxable Grand List”.