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04-Feb-2018
Ellicott Development buys CTG's Delaware Avenue building
The Buffalo News Online
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A prominent part of Mansion Row along Buffalo's Delaware Avenue has changed hands.
Fourteen months after putting it up for sale, Computer Task Group has sold its secondary
office building on Delaware to Ellicott Development Co.'s 4628 Group Inc.
Ellicott, owned by Carl and William Paladino, paid $1.8 million on Friday to acquire the
administrative facility at 685 and 700 Delaware.
The 44,680-square-foot building had originally been marketed for CTG by Ciminelli Real
Estate Corp. for $3.2 million when CTG put it up for sale in November 2016. The asking
price was later reduced to $2.6 million.
Built in 1957, the red-brick building has three floors, and is located a block away from CTG's
primary headquarters in the former Knox Mansion at 800 Delaware. The property includes
32 parking spaces behind the building, plus another 47 spaces across the street at 685
Delaware.
According to a marketing brochure from Ciminelli, CTG had recently finished $1.25 million in
renovations, with an improved HVAC system, new windows and "various other
improvements." It includes break areas, open spaces and a "dedicated" technology room.
William Paladino, Ellicott's CEO, could not be reached for comment Sunday as to his plans
for the building, located on 0.71 acres between Summer and North streets, just north of the
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site.
CTG had initially put both the Knox Mansion and the administrative building up for sale for a
total of $6.5 million. At the time, officials were seeking to capitalize on the burgeoning real
estate market in Buffalo while consolidating the company's workforce into a single building
somewhere else to lower expenses after reporting two quarterly losses amid falling
revenues.
It had previously tried to sell the historic mansion a year earlier after considering a
retrenchment into 700 Delaware as its base. But it was unsuccessful, so it later reversed
course with a plan to sell both buildings, and then ultimately decided last year to consolidate
into the mansion instead.
"Now that we have sold our building at 700 Delaware Ave., our Buffalo based corporate
employees are working in one building, our headquarters, at 800 Delaware Ave.," CTG
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer John M. Laubacker said Sunday by email.
" We currently have no plans to relocate to another location."
Built in 1918, the Knox Mansion was built for Grace Millard Knox, widow of Seymour H.
Knox, who founded and owned the S.H. Knox Co. five-and-dime stores and later served as
vice president of Woolworth Co. and chairman of the board of Marine Trust Co., later HSBC
Bank USA.
Designed by prominent architect Charles Pierrepont H. Gilbert and constructed at a cost of
$600,000, the French Renaissance-style house originally had 25 rooms, and is about
48,000 square feet. It was owned by the family until 1969, when it was acquired by the
Montefiore Club, a private men's club. CTG bought it in 1978, and has occupied it since.