Photo courtesy of Google Maps

A Quincy office building that hit the auction block in April has been sold to a local investor for $5.5 million, or $12.5 million less than its previous sale in 2005.

The 118,909-square-foot 400 Crown Colony Drive property was listed on an online auction site with a starting bid of $2.5 million. 400 Crown Colony LLC, an entity that lists Ali Lotfi of Weston as manager, acquired the property June 8 in a cash transaction from UBS Realty Investors, according to property records.

The 6-story office building was developed in 1987 and originally anchored by The Patriot Ledger newspaper, which relocated in 2018 to 2 Adams Place in Quincy.

The property is currently 43 percent occupied, according to auction documents which suggested that potential buyers consider a life science conversion.

Vacancies in the 13.9 million-square-foot Route 128 south office market stood at 13.6 percent at the end of the first quarter, according to CBRE data, with average asking rents of $27.04 per square foot on a gross basis.