One Charles Center, a staple of downtown’s business district once owned by the late Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, has new owners.

But they are not the ones who bought the 23-story building at a two-day auction in April for $4.5 million.

Instead, 100 N. Charles Owner LLC, owned by Prabhakar Thangarajah and Patrick Grace, bought the building under a different deal for $4 million, Grace told The Baltimore Banner. Thangarajah declined to comment.

They plan to keep it as an office building.

“We had no plans to buy it, but I said at $4 million, it’s too hard to pass up,” Grace said. “I would call it an iconic building. The structure represents Baltimore, and the fact that it’s ready to go and doesn’t require a lot of work for additional tenants to move in and use the building — it was just too hard to pass up.”

It is unclear what happened to the deal that came out of the auction that began April 16 and was held on the online auction platform Ten-X. That buyer was never disclosed.

Grace, a residential developer and owner of Trademark Properties, said they were not the winners of the auction. Jay Wellschlager, managing director of capital markets at JLL, the broker for the property, declined to comment.

Grace, along with Alan Sadowski, director of commercial construction at Asta Heights Construction, also confirmed that Thangarajah was the new owner of the building.

Grace and Thangarajah have another joint venture together — the Baltimore-based Asta Heights Construction. Thangarajah is based in Ashburn, Virginia, and is the president and CEO of Asta CRS, an information technology company listed in Virginia as a stock corporation.

ASTA Heights Construction is converting the Fidelity & Deposit building at 210 N. Charles St. from offices to multifamily apartments with more than 200 units planned.

“We are going to actively and aggressively keep the building [One Charles Center] an office space,” Grace said. “We want to keep it the way it is and keep leasing it.”

However, the building has been losing money with just under 33% occupancy. Angelos’ law firm, Peter Angelos Law P.C., is still a tenant, along with Edible Arrangements, the nonprofit Baltimore Heritage and the American Institute of Architects.

One Charles Center once signified the revitalization of Baltimore’s downtown in the 1960s as the first high-rise building in the area. Despite the property being on the National Register of Historic Places, the city’s Central Business District has declined over the decades partly because of crime, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of remote work.

Angelos attempted to sell the property in August 2022. The starting bid was $1.5 million for the recent auction.

Surrounding buildings have gone through major renovations in recent years, including the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company building, CFG Bank Arena, and Alertus Technologies at 10 N. Charles St. One Charles Center was last renovated in the 1990s.

“The building is beautiful; it was well-maintained and well-run,” Grace said. “The current tenants are very happy there, so yeah, no plans to convert at all.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the day the auction began.