The new owner of the Cranberry Woods campus that houses the headquarters of Westinghouse Corp. has not been disclosed. The property was recently sold for $180 million.

CRANBERRY TWP — The new owner of Westinghouse Corp.'s Cranberry Woods campus remains veiled in mystery because of the way the property was sold.

Rather than a direct sale of the property to another corporation, the company first transferred the property to a subsidiary and then sold that and at least three other subsidiaries, according to records. Had the company directly sold the property, the transfer would have created a public record naming the buyer.

But at least one Cranberry Township official said the seemingly clandestine nature of the sale isn't so unusual.

Jerry Andree, township manager, said this kind of secrecy is sometimes common for such a large sale. The total sale price, which included the Westinghouse campus, was $180 million.

“When you see such a high number, that record-breaking number, that's not unusual, it's not a real transparent transaction,” Andree said. “When there's a lack of transparency, people start saying, 'Hmm, what's this all about?' We become suspicious. That's just human nature.”

Because of that, Andree said, the township will try to clear the air.

“We're going to try to bring some transparency and understanding,” he added.

A Jan. 17 news release issued by JLL Capital Markets announced the sale was finalized, saying the company “closed the sale of certain subsidiaries of Columbia Property Trust that own the Westinghouse Electric Company Headquarters, an 823,979-square-foot Class A corporate headquarters building in the Pittsburgh-area community of Cranberry Township ...”

At least one of the subsidiaries created by Columbia Property Trust in advance of the sale — CF Cranberry LLC — was created just two days before Columbia announced its $180 million sale of the LLC. Previous media articles reported the buyer of the property was a “foreign” corporation. However, that's because CF Cranberry LLC was created in the state of Delaware, which would be considered a foreign entity in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Even following records filed with the Butler County Recorder of Deeds and Pennsylvania's Department of State, no information has emerged on the identity of Westinghouse's new landlord. The Jan. 17 JLL news release described the buyer simply as “an institutional investor.”

Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Columbia, did not respond to a phone call or email seeking comment Thursday. Neither did Kristen Murphy, who represents JLL Capital Markets. JLL brokered the sale of Columbia's subsidiary. Both were asked about the new owner of the property.

Columbia transferred the deed between its subsidiaries for $10, but it will remit taxes on the computed value of the property — around $145.5 million. Cranberry Township and Seneca Valley School District will each receive 0.5 percent of that value, about $727,000 each, and the state will get 1 percent, or about $1.45 million.

Cranberry Township budgeted $1.9 million in 2020 for deed transfer tax receipts. The proceeds from the Westinghouse site sale brings that amount more than a third of the way to the township's goal.

If the site didn't receive exemptions from the state, the property owner would pay about $1.2 million annually in property tax to the county, school district and township. According to Andree, the campus will return to the tax rolls in January 2022.

If all that was involved in the sale was the Westinghouse campus, the nearly 824,000-square-foot property sold for more than $218 per square foot.