Int’l Investor Bets On Whalley Eyesore

Joseph Shilon is plunking millions into New Haven real estate.

The site of that proposed redevelopment is 50 Fitch St., also known as 781 Whalley Ave. The long-vacant and dilapidated former office complex sits at the corner of Fitch Street and Whalley Avenue.

According to the city land records database, on June 18, a Guatemala-based investor and geothermal energy operator named Joseph Shilon granted a $1.4 million mortgage to the property’s owners, a holding company controlled by local landlord duo Mendy Paris and Sim Levenhartz.

That new $1.4 million mortgage came eight days after Shilon also took over a $2.35 million mortgage on the property previously granted by 50 Fitch’s former owner, New York-based landlord Edward Roubeni.

Roubeni granted Paris and Levenhartz that $2.35 million mortgage back in September 2019 — at the same time that he sold them the blighted Westville property for $3.1 million.

So, where does all this leave Paris’s plan to turn this Whalley corner eyesore into 200 luxury apartments?

“We are in predevelopment right now,” Paris told the Independent this week. ​“We’re working with a large architectural firm. We’re anticipating end of this year having it fully approved” by the city.

And what does this new infusion of cash from Shilon mean for 50 Fitch?

Basically, Shilon has bought out Roubeni’s remaining stake in the still-vacant site, Paris said.

“All this does is get [Roubeni] out of the picture and enable us to have a little bit more flexibility moving forward,” he said. ​“Obviously, when we move forward, there’s going to be a lot more investment” than just $1.4 million.

Will Shilon be the primary investor in the planned development?

“Too early to determine,” Paris said. ​“I may co-develop this. I’m talking to a few very, very large developers right now. There’s a lot of interest in the property.”

And why has 50 Fitch gone from being a dilapidated, boarded-up building when Paris and Levenhartz first bought the property in October 2019 to … a dilapidated, boarded up building with three large ​“We Buy Houses” posters hanging from the sides now? (Two of those signs are pictured above. One, not pictured, is on the back of the building facing north on Fitch Street.)

“When I bought the building, there were broken windows everywhere. I boarded up all the windows. I painted them black. It was nice and clean,” Paris said in his defense. ​“I secured the building. I can’t stop people from spray-painting.”

He stated that this boarded-up-billboard state of 50 Fitch is only temporary.

“The building’s going to be coming down pretty quickly,” Paris said. So are the three ​“We Buy Houses” signs currently hanging from the building sides on Whalley Avenue and Fitch Street.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused ​“everyone to run into their caves,” he said. ​“Now we’re coming out of corona, and there’s a lot of new interest from a lot of investors. Maybe investors that typically didn’t play in the Connecticut market, now are all of a sudden interested in Connecticut.”

“New Haven Is A Promising Market”

City land records show that Shilon’s new $1.4 million loan for 50 Fitch isn’t his first time investing in New Haven real estate.

Over the past half-decade, he appears to have invested — in whole or in part — up to roughly $20 million in Paris and Levenhartz’s local real estate ventures. (In city land records, Shilon sometimes spells his last name as Shilonne. And in a recent New York Supreme Court case involving a borrower’s alleged default on Shilon’s $4.4 million loan, as well as in a 2010 Reuters article about his work in Guatemala for the Israeli-American energy company Ormat, he spelled his first name as Yossi.)

Some of those New Haven real estate investments by Shilon include:

• A $7 million mortgage to Paris and Levenhartz in September 2020 for a 10-acre office complex in the Hill.

• A $3.5 million mortgage to Paris and Levenhartz in September 2019 — granted along with fellow investors Asher Kugler, D.Y. Interest Investment Management LTD, Eysy Consulting and Assets LTD, and Yoni Shilon — for a Mill River office building that the local duo plans to turn into apartments.

• A $1.5 million loan to Paris and Levenhartz in July 2018 — granted along with Kugler and D.Y. Interest Investment Management LTD — for nine residential properties in New Haven, Hamden, and West Haven.

• A $700,000 loan to Levenhartz in June 2021 for a two-family home and a single-family home on Front Street.

• A $270,000 loan to Paris and Levenhartz in May 2020 for a two-family home on West Prospect Street.

• A $60,000 loan to Paris and Levenhartz in December 2020 for a two-family home on Hurlburt Street.

The Independent could not tally the total, aggregate dollar amount of Shilon’s mortgages to Paris and Levenhartz over the years because some of the mortgage documents — like a Jan. 21 loan to SP Capital LLC for a condo at 14 Oak Ridge Dr., Unit 7 — left blank the section where that principal dollar amount would otherwise go.

“I am a private person and do not give interviews to the media,” Shilon told the Independent by email when asked for comment about his investment in New Haven real estate. ​“My lending on real estate developments in New Haven reflects my view that New Haven real estate is a promising market.”

Paris disputed the Independent’s calculation that Shilon has invested roughly $20 million over the years in his and Levenhartz’s local property businesses. ​“A lot of the money has been recycled,” he said. ​“When we refinance or sell a property, the money would go to another property. It’s definitely not $20 million. That’s too high.”