10-04-2025
Wanna buy a skyscraper? Auction of Providence's second-tallest tower postponed.
The new auction date is June 13, Ponte said.
Leading up to Thursday, bidders were instructed to bring a $250,000 deposit check to bid on the property, which was last purchased for $51.8 million by JFR Global Investments, a New York-based real estate company, in 2018. The mortgage has changed hands several times, and is currently held by OFP Real Property Owner LLC.
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JFR Global could not be reached for comment.
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One Financial Plaza, on the far left, is the second-tallest building in the state at 28 stories high.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Ponte and representatives with CBRE, a real estate firm that manages the
building
, were the ones who turned prospective bidders and observers away.
'I don't know what's going on,' said former Providence mayor Joe Paolino,
a prominent real estate developer
, while he was told of the auction would not take place.
In 2017, when the building was last up for sale, Paolino was one of the developers who was considering making an offer. Prior to the 2018 sale, it was last sold in 2007 for $65.65 million.
Ponte told the Globe that he did not know why the auction was postponed.
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The tower, which is the second tallest building in the state after
A sculpture outside of One Financial Plaza in Providence, R.I.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Also nicknamed the Sovereign Bank Tower,
it
was supposed to house the organization
that funded the quasi-public
Rhode Island Housing
agency
.
Most
of the office space inside the tower is outdated, and tens of thousands of square feet of office space remains available for lease,
Current tenants include Starbucks on the ground level, Bank of America, Lock Lord, Santander Bank, KPMG, Barton Gilman, Robinson & Cole, among others.
The privately-owned plaza was also been nominated to the preservation society's 2025
While Thursday's auction mostly attracted real estate executives and attorneys, it also attracted a small group of activists who wanted to disrupt the auction.
'Empty office buildings like this are always getting tax breaks, all while we lack housing and homelessness is on the rise,' said Mike Araujo with the Providence Worker Defense. The cooperative that advocates for working class people brought a $250,000 check so they could also bid on the building, but Araujo admitted that it would certainly bounce.
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Commercial real estate
vacancy rates in downtown
Providence
are already high: In the Financial District alone, which is where One Financial is located, more than 20 percent of all commercial spaces are empty. In nearby Capital Center, nearly 32 percent of spaces are vacant.
Real estate leaders like Paolino have warned that the collapse of commercial real estate will have a devastating impact on the city's tax base.
In the city's most recent revaluation, commercial office values did increase by about 9 percent, but that pales in comparison to
The city pegs One Financial Plaza's current value at $40 million, but no one expects the building to go for that much.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at
