1294 Chapel: Auctioned, but not yet sold. A certified public accountant hoping to move his business back to New Haven ended up on top at a Chapel Street foreclosure auction — for an office building that the current owner hopes to hold onto by regaining its nonprofit status and clearing three years of tax debt.That’s the latest with 1294 Chapel St., a two-story office building located between Dwight and Day streets.That property is owned by the Greater New Haven Business and Professional Association (GNHBPA), a local Black-business support agency run by Rey Harp. The group acquired the Chapel Street building for $1,136,000 in 2021 after being bought out to make way for Dixwell Plaza’s redevelopment. According to court filings, the nearly 60-year-old agency accrued a local real estate tax debt of $93,254 over the last three years. In April, a state judge granted the city’s request to foreclose on 1294 Chapel St. and put it up for auction. The property was appraised by the court as worth $975,000.Saturday’s foreclosure auction doesn’t mean that Harp’s agency will definitely lose the building. But it does mean GNHBPA has less than a month to pay off its tax debts if it wants to keep the property.Despite the sunny conditions Saturday morning and the high levels of expected interest — court-appointed attorney Noah Eisenhandler said he’d received inquiries from ​“twelve to fifteen people” — only two bidders showed up with the requisite $97,500 deposit for the noon auction.One of those bidders, Glastonbury-based CPA Guang Zhao, speculated that the paucity of bidders was because GNHBPA owns the building and is facing a tax-based, rather than mortgage-based, foreclosure. “At the end of the day, how are you going to lose a million-dollar property over $100,00 [in taxes],” Zhao said. ​“Even if I win, I’m probably going to waste my time, they’re going to redeem it in the next 30 days.”As Eisenhandler told bidders before the auction, GNHBPA has until Dec. 1 to pay off the tax debt and keep the building, regardless of the auction results. Both Zhao and the other bidder who showed up to participate in Saturday’s auction, Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu, declined to be photographed for this article. Xu declined to be interviewed by the Independent.Auction observer Latara Miller: Looking to learn. Shortly before noon, Latara Miller also arrived at the parking lot next to 1294 Chapel. She didn’t participate in the auction, but instead showed up just to observe. Miller said that she was looking to invest in residential properties in her home neighborhood of Fair Haven, and wanted to see how the foreclosure process worked.At noon, Eisenhandler began the bidding with a starting offer from the city of $116,000. Zhao quickly countered with $117,000, and the auction was underway.The bidding progressed rapidly, with the Zhao and Xu mostly staring at their phones, raising each other first by increments of $100,000, then $50,000 and $25,000. Finally, after 18 bids, Zhao put in a high bid of $780,000, which was met with a shake of the head from Xu.Afterward, Zhao said that he was happy with the price and that he likely would not have paid more than $800,000 for the property. He said if GNHBPA doesn’t cover their tax bill and he does get the property, he wants to move his CPA business there.“I went to Southern [Connecticut State University]. I always wanted to come back to New Haven,” Zhao said.For Miller, watching the auction made it clear that she wanted less competition when bidding.“Just hope there’s really nobody here, just hope it’s real slim,” she said about auctions she might participate in some day.Court records show that Zhao followed through on Saturday on submitting to the court a requisite deposit of $97,500 in his bid to buy the property.Harp: Coming Back Soon, "Bigger & Better"Inside GNHBPA's current home on Chapel. Rey Harp, at his former Dixwell office: "We expect to return to full strength — Bigger and Better -- in the very near future." Inside 1294 Chapel on Saturday after the auction, GNHBPA Executive Director Rey Harp laid out for this reporter his plan to make sure the agency would not lose the building and could rebuild after several years of financial difficulty.“It’s an embarrassment, and I understand that,” Harp said. ​“But not only is the tax issue a big embarrassment, it’s also a great opportunity. It gives it the opportunity for us to expand our programming and come back, back to the community.”How did the agency fall behind on three years worth of local real estate taxes? Harp told the Independent, and the agency has argued in court filings, that as a nonprofit, GNHBPA should be exempt from property taxes. That largely was the case at their old location at 192 Dixwell Ave. The problem is that the agency is no longer a registered nonprofit after it failed to submit the proper tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and was not eligible for tax relief. “The accounting firm we had at that time screwed up, didn’t file, didn’t tell us that they were not filing,” Harp said. ​“Since we’ve changed CPAs, we’ve got someone who’s reliable.”Harp said the agency is currently in the process of appealing to the IRS to have their nonprofit status reinstated. In the meantime though, the tax bill has accumulated, forcing Harp to seek a loan to cover the cost.In an Oct. 16 motion to extend the auction date, the agency submitted a conditional term sheet for a $500,000 30-year-loan from Atlantic Capital Investments. Harp said that would allow the agency to wipe their tax debt, complete necessary renovations on 1294 Chapel and begin to hire back full-time staff and run new programming for local businesses — another key step in getting the agency’s nonprofit status back. While the court did not grant the agency’s October request to delay Saturday’s auction, citing earlier delays, it did give Harp until Dec. 1 to secure the funding and keep the building. Now, Harp just has to close the deal. He said he thinks he’ll have the money within ​“a week or so.”When asked whether he ever expected there to be an auction right outside his office door, Harp sat back, visibly emotional.“No, no,” he said. ​“The decision-making process of nonprofits, it takes a while. It takes a while, and it takes trust and it takes the ability to work together.”After his interview on Saturday, Harp emailed the following statement to the Independent:“We deeply regret the delays in completing the refinancing program. The agency was more severely impacted by the Covid pandemic than was originally thought, with staff reductions and program shut-downs. Its recovery efforts were further hampered by our move and relocation to the new facility. But we are making steady progress in overcoming the agency’s Covid induced challenges, and expect the current re-financing program to be completed momentarily. We expect to return to full strength — Bigger and Better — in the very near future. We are committed to continue meeting our mission to the New Haven community and dedicate our entire organizational resources to producing a positive result.”Court-appointed attorney Noah Eisenhandler at Saturday's auction.