The brick-and-glass building sits on the waterfront. The Knights of Columbus has sold a nine-story Long Wharf office tower for $14 million, six years after buying the building in a foreclosure sale for $12.8 million. The buyer, a holding company controlled by Water Street Properties, purchase d 545 Long Wharf Dr. on Jan. 9, according to a warranty deed posted to the city’s online land records database. Water Street is a private real estate investment company that owns 16 properties across the country. Before purchasing the office tower, the company had already assumed a partial ownership stake in late 2024. The city most recently appraised 545 Long Wharf Dr. for tax purposes at $18,652,600 — after the Knights of Columbus successfully slashed roughly $25 million from its appraised value through a successful tax-assessment appeal. (See more on that below.) The property’s seller, Knights of Columbus, is a New Haven-based Catholic fraternal order, global charitable group, and life insurance company. It is listed with the federal Internal Revenue Services as a 501(c)(8) fraternal society nonprofit. The Knights of Columbus previously owned 545 Long Wharf Dr. through a holding company named 545 Real Estate Holdings LLC. Based on the city’s property tax records, recent tenants include Morgan Stanley, Canon Solutions America, Barclay Damon, Flo-Tech, and Ameriprise Financial. Knights of Columbus is also listed on the building’s physical directory. In November 2024, the Hartford Business Journal reported that the tower was 55 percent occupied. The property’s seller and buyer did not respond to requests for comment about the building’s current occupancy rate, among other questions. The brick-and-glass commercial building covers 250,000 square feet and sits on the waterfront. In typical real estate sales, the seller pays between 1 and 2.75 percent of the final sale price in a state conveyance tax. In this instance, however, Knights of Columbus paid nothing in state real estate taxes on the $14 million sale. Meanwhile, when Knights of Columbus purchased 545 Long Wharf Dr. in 2020, the seller, a holding company owned by Deutsche Bank, paid $160,125 in state taxes on the $12.8 million sale. (While the Jan. 9 sale of 545 Long Wharf appears to have been exempt from state real estate conveyance taxes, the transaction did yield $70,000 in local real estate conveyance taxes.) The new owner, Water Street, lists its headquarters at 545 Long Wharf Dr. on its website. Over the period that Knights of Columbus owned 545 Long Wharf Dr., the group successfully appealed the property’s local tax bill and more than halved its taxes after Grand List Year 2020. In 2020, Knights of Columbus paid $960,197.52 in property taxes on 545 Long Wharf Dr. In 2021 and 2022, the group paid $1,045,642.64 and $1,143,103.92, respectively. In April 2022, a Knights of Columbus holding company sued the city for its valuation of the property in Grand List Year 2021. According to the complaint, as of Oct. 1, 2021, the city appraised the market value of 545 Long Wharf Dr. at $43,898,000, meaning the assessed value — the figure used to calculate property taxes — was $30,728,600. (In Connecticut, a property’s assessed value is 70 percent of its appraised value.) A March 2024 “memorandum of agreement” submitted by the city states that the two sides agreed to drop the property’s fair-market value from $43,898,000 to $18,652,600 — or by more than $25.2 million. As a result, in the second half of 2024, the city adjusted Knights of Columbus’s tax bills by more than halving the initial 2021 and 2022 charges on 545 Long Wharf Dr. to $519,008.60 and $485,713.70, respectively. The excess payments were credited towards future tax bills. In Grand List Year 2023, Knights of Columbus was charged $502,687.58. According to the city’s assessor’s database, 545 Long Wharf Dr. was mostly recently assessed at $13,056,820 — representing 70 percent of the new appraisal of $18,652,600. Knights of Columbus’s tax-assessment appeal came after a previous owner successfully sued in 2017 to reduced the city’s fair-market valuation of the property from $41,502,100 to $31,260,500. After Grand List Year 2023, Knights of Columbus handed over the tax bill for 545 Long Wharf Dr. to WS545 LWD LLC, a holding company owned by Water Street. For Grand List Year 2024, Water Street paid $514,438.72 on June 6, 2025. Meanwhile, Right Next Door … … Robert Landino, a Westbrook-based developer, told the Independent that 555 Long Wharf Dr. is doing well. In 2024, Landino purchased the adjacent 15-story office tower for $11.1 million in a distressed sale. At the time, he said the property was about 40 percent occupied. On Thursday, he didn’t disclose the current occupancy rate but said the tower has already found a few new tenants. “We’ve been working to address deferred maintenance,” said Landino, by renovating the lobby, adding a new restaurant vendor, redoing the fitness center, and updating the mechanical systems. He said they plan to “relaunch the building” and hire a broker in the spring or early summer. Those maintenance improvements were a crucial step given the post-pandemic office market, argued Landino. “The lifestyle and work habits of folks around the country has changed. In the new world, you manage that change.” One way of doing so, argued Landino, is by giving consumers “the best in the market.” Landino said nearly all of the building’s current tenants — which span the finance and biotech sectors — have renewed. He expects the next wave of tenants to use the space for medical functions. Even with less demand for offices overall, Landino still has conviction in the New Haven market. New Haven is “in the upper tier of low vacancy rates” compared to other places in the state, said Landino, which, in part, speaks to “all of what Yale brings to the table” for local businesses. The post K of C Sells Wharf Tower For $14M appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less