Former Connecticut Post building sold to N.Y. investor
The former Connecticut Post building has a new owner.
The four-story, 57,870-square-foot building at 410 State St. that housed the Bridgeport-based newspaper for nine decades was sold to an investor from New York City for $1.15 million. The structure will be renovated and leased out.
The transaction was announced Wednesday morning by Jon Angel, president of Fairfield-based commercial real estate firm Angel Commercial, which represented the buyer, New York-based Next Step Creative Group. Cushman & Wakefield represented the seller.
Next Step Creative Group, an investment and development firm, specializes in developing space for educational and vocational programs. It currently has around seven projects in the pipeline in and around New York.
“Bridgeport has a lot to offer in industrial, office, as well as educational fields, so we think that we are investing in a bright future and Bridgeport is a part of that investment,” said co-owner David Esfhani.
The downtown Bridgeport building will be joining a series of other purchases Next Step Creative Group has invested in within Bridgeport. The company also purchased buildings last June at 800 Union Ave. that have been leased out to businesses including Black Horse Garage and QTI, a vocational training institute.
“We always look for opportunities that occur in the real estate market,” Esfhani said.
With the transaction complete, the new owner said a cleanup of the space has already begun with plans of completing renovation and leasing by 2019. Plans call for renovating and leasing out the brick building while maintaining the original structure of the space.
“We love the way that the structure is,” he said. “We’re updating some of the areas that are in need of updating, mechanical, roofing and so on, but the physicality of the fixtures on the outside exterior wall we are going to keep the same.”
While there is no prospective list of tenants, Esfhani said he and his colleagues are hopeful they can draw in businesses that will benefit the area.
The building dates to 1928 and sits at the corner of State and Courtland streets in downtown Bridgeport not far from Interstate 95 and Route 8.
The Connecticut Post’s local reporters, editors and photographers vacated the office building in November and moved three block away to 1057 Broad St.
Other staffers from the building moved last year to parent company Hearst Connecticut Media’s headquarters at Merritt 7 Corporate Park in Norwalk.