Thomas Breen photo
The Frontier building at 310 Orange, now under new ownership.
A New Jersey-based real estate company has purchased the Frontier Communications building on Orange Street for over $73.8 million, providing a cash infusion for the Norwalk-based telecommunications company — which subsequently signed a 20-year lease with its new landlords.
That’s according to some of the latest filings posted to the city’s online land records database.
On July 29, Three Ten Orange LLC spent $73,846,000 buying Frontier Communications’ 14-story, 400,000-square foot downtown office building at 310 Orange St. from the Southern New England Telephone Company, which is a subsidiary of Frontier.
The city last appraised that property as worth $26,888,300.
The property’s new owner is an affiliate of a Lakewood, N.J.-based company called Avalair Group, which is described on its website as a “privately held, vertically integrated real estate company” that owns a mix of commercial and residential properties as well as telecommunications infrastructure, mostly in New York and New Jersey.
A representative from Availair did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.
Another recent filing on the city land records database indicates that the telecommunications company likely won’t be moving its New Haven operations out of town anytime soon.
Thomas Breen photo
310 Orange St.
That’s because, on the very same day that the Avalair affiliate purchased 310 Orange St., the property’s new landlord signed a 20-year lease with the Southern New England Telephone Company that extends through July 29, 2042. The lease includes an option to renew for four additional periods of 10 years each.
“The premises leased to the Tenant pursuant to the Lease consists of approximately 400,000 square feet in the building located at 310 Orange St, New Haven, CT 06510,” the lease reads.
The Independent asked a representative from Frontier about what this sale means for its locally based operations.
“We are not reducing our footprint in New Haven,” Frontier spokesperson Chrissy Murray replied. “The decisions about whether to own or lease given facilities are made in the best interests of the company.” Murray did not respond to a follow-up question about how exactly this sale is in “the best interests of the company.”
Frontier’s sale of its Orange Street office building comes a little more than a year after the telecommunications company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with promises to build out its infrastructure of fiber-based Internet services. It also comes at the same time that Connecticut utility regulators have fined Frontier $5 million for “jeopardizing public safety through reckless and inappropriate underground installations” of fiber-optic cables in the public right-of-way in the state. Click here and here for articles by the New Haven Register’s Luther Turmelle about that fine and Frontier’s response.
@ Tom Breen - not to be picky, and I love your writing! But during the October 2021 revaluation the City recently valued the building at $26.9 Million. It then assessed it for property tax purposes at 70% or $18.2 Million. [Reporter's note: Thank you very much for catching that mistake on my part! Yes, I meant to write "appraised," not "assessed." All fixed. The property indeed was last appraised by the city as worth $26.88 million, and assessed for property tax purposes at $18.2 million.]