Developer Buying Salvation Army Properties, Aims To Convert Hovels Into Upscale Complex

“Alpha Dog” had a plan: Steal electricity for a squatters’ crash pad. Developer Robert Smith has a different plan for the property: Build new market-rate apartments and a mid-block ​“mews.”

Alpha Dog put his plan into place at abandoned Salvation Army buildings downtown. Then cops discovered his hidden lair last week, plus a dismembered human torso, and locked him up.

Smith will now get his chance to put his more permanent plan for the same buildings into place: He has won a competition to purchase the Salvation Army buildings and surrounding property. He plans to transform the one-time centers for down-and-out addicts and secondhand clothing into the kind of upscale housing he and others have already started building on the block.

The dreams and fates of Alpha Dog — as he was referred to — and developer Smith reflect the dramatic reversal of fortune taking place on the block bounded by Crown, High, George and College streets, perhaps the most rapidly upscaling block of downtown New Haven.

Developer Central

Smith, who runs the Milford-based development firm Metro Star Properties LLC, has been one of several developers transforming that block, a bridge between the Central Business District and the Yale/Yale-New Haven medical area. Smith’s crews are hard at work building 12 studios and lofts above a mid-block garage next to Bar restaurant …

… and 24 apartments (including a top floor being added on Tuesday) plus ground-floor retail in a conversion of a former garage at the block’s western corner.

Meanwhile developer Robert Landino is finishing up a $50 million 160 luxury-unit Centerplan development at the corner of College and Crown (above). Pike International bought and restored a building on the block at 250 Crown, which it rents to Yale’s Baker’s Dozen singing group. Yale owns another building.

Two properties have stood out as reminders of the old Crown Street. The Salvation Army owned both of them: A secondhand clothing store at 274 Crown St. And an adjacent, three-story brick building that abuts the rear of that property, set back from the street at 301 George St. The building previously housed an adult rehabilitation center for struggling addicts.

The Salvation Army cleared out of those buildings last summer. They’ve been vacant ever since.

Banking on a hot downtown rental market for professionals, students and empty nesters, both Landino and Smith joined a competition to buy the properties from the Salvation Army. Both told the Independent they wanted to continue building the kind of housing (and in Landino’s case, retail) that they’ve already started creating on the block. ​“My original vision was to buy the entire block. I had started talking with Salvation Army at that time. When they weren’t ready to sell, it stopped me in my tracks,” Landino said.

When the buildings were ready for sale, Smith won the competition for an undisclosed price. ​“Our closing is in 30 days,” he said Tuesday.

On July 15 Smith also bought the next-door Regency apartment building at 297 George, where he said he plans to ​“improve the exterior aesthetics of the building by modernizing the exterior finishes.” He paid $5 million for the Regency, according to land records.

The Salvation Army property, which widens from its Crown Street storefront to a larger swath of the middle of the block, covers a total of .81 acres. Smith plans to build rental apartments on the property. ​“We have not finalized the design or unit count at this time. We are planning to rehabilitate and incorporate some of the existing structures into our plan,” he said.

Smith (pictured) said the project will ​“reflect the existing historic and architecturally rich environment that New Haven possesses.”

He said he plans to fill the block with apartments in several modes. He plans to construct a ​“mews,” or alley, from Crown to George street as part of the project. (His team, meanwhile, is busy redesigning part of Branford, too.)

City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson applauded Smith’s initial plans for the George/Crown property. He said the plans include restoring the vacant, old brick church attached to the former adult rehab center in the middle of the block.

“It’s a very interesting, sophisticated project that will tie together his other properties on Crown and his other properties on George,” Nemerson said. ​“The fact that he’s saving the church, which is very expensive — is really very commendable. He’s going to bring it back to its old glory. And you’re going to keep this recessed pocket jewel off George Street.”

Alpha Dog’s Plans

City officials did not applaud Alpha Dog’s plans — once they learned of them.

Alpha Dog is a 46-year-old homeless man with an enterprising gift, at least when it comes to commandeering vulnerable, vacant real estate. (We’re not naming him because of his pending charges, to which he has not entered a plea.)

In and out of jail for at least ten years, according to the state judicial website, ​“Alpha Dog” is the man who law enforcement officials believe kept the lights on at the vacant Salvation Army buildings where he and other members of the homeless community squatted.

He was found guilty in 2010 on three threatening charges in Waterbury, for which he received a one-year suspended sentence. In 2012, he was arrested on a sixth-degree larceny charge; he subsequently pleaded guilty and received a 13-month sentence.

He also pleaded guilty in 2014 to a felony weapons charge, for which he received a six-year sentence to be suspended after 13 months followed by three years of probation. Alpha Dog was released from MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield on Feb. 27 after shuttling nine times among different jails over a year and a half. (While it’s common to be transferred in the presentencing stages of a case, it’s not common for inmates to be transferred multiple times over a year and half, said a corrections spokesperson. The department did not have available explanations for the transfers.)

Freed and still on parole, the Alpha Dog apparently found his way to the abandoned Salvation Army properties, which homeless people, drug users and prostitutes were able to break break into with seemingly little problem.

The man set himself up as the ​“alpha dog” in charge of the operation, one homeless man living there told police investigators, as recounted in an arrest warrant affidavit written by veteran New Haven homicide detective Michael Wuchek.

He found a way to jimmy electricity. He got a walk-in freezer to work. He ​“walk[ed] around with a 2x4 piece of lumber” and gave orders.

Around a half dozen or so people were believed to have been living in the George Street building at any one time, with others passing through and crashing, or engaging in illicit activities. Police have been called to the location from time to time on burglary and trespassing complaints. They had asked the property manager to board it up better.

But the full scope of Alpha Dog’s operation might have remained had it not been for a grisly discovery made down the road near the State Street train tracks.

Sleep Interrupted

It was there on the morning of July 15, (the same day that Robert Smith was acquiring the adjacent Regency apartment building), that police came upon two severed human legs hidden in brush along a fence atop an embankment above the tracks. A state forensic lab has since matched the DNA from the legs to Ray Roberson, a homeless man nicknamed ​“Boo Boo”, who had a gift for painting, but struggled with alcoholism, his sister, Sherell Nesmith, told the Independent last week.

Later on July 15 police came upon two severed arms nearby. The cops are awaiting state lab results on the arms’ DNA to determine if they also belong to Roberson, or someone else.

Meanwhile, state and local police have been hunting for the rest of the body Roberson’s body, and clues to who might have killed him. That search brought them last Wednesday to Robert Smith’s future mews, and Alpha Dog’s former home.

That day a ​“concerned citizen” told downtown beat cop Pate Ballolli that ​“he had heard that ​‘the guy that got chopped up’ lived in the basement of the abandoned Salvation Army building on 301 George St. with a very large unknown white male [who had] chopped him up with an axe,” according to the warrant affidavit.

Ballolli and fellow patrolman Officer Dan Hartnett entered the building Wednesday through an open door and found three people there, one of whom had been living inside for a week. One of the three spoke of ​“very handy” ​“alpha dog” who got electricity going and ​“walk[ed] around with a 2x4 piece of lumber and orders everyone around.”

Soon the city and state cops investigating the Roberson’s dismemberment came on scene, launching what would be days of searching the two former Salvation Army buildings.

It didn’t take long for state cadaver dogs to hit on something.

They found a dismembered torso, in a back room of the adjoining Salvation Army building with the Crown Street address. Law enforcement officials are now waiting on state lab results to confirm whether the torso belonged to Roberson.

While the search of the Salvation Army buildings didn’t turn up any more dismembered parts, investigators did find one other surprise at 301 George: the ​“Alpha Dog.”

“They checked the furnace room and found a door that was covered by a bed sheet,” according to the affidavit. ​“The door had no knob and only a deadbolt and was not secured. They opened the door and found another room. Inside the room was a white male sleeping on a bed. They detained the white male in handcuffs without incident.” The room had ​“power and a working light, T.V., and fan inside.”

Alpha Dog was subsequently charged with sixth-degree larceny, third-degree burglary, and third-degree criminal trespass in connection to his squatting at the former Salvation Army buildings.

Police also questioned him about the Roberson case. He admitted that Ray Roberson had lived there with him, according to the affidavit. He denied having anything to do with Roberson’s murder. (Roberson’s sister Nesmith told the Independent she learned that her brother had been staying before his death with other homeless people in ​“this place [that] had a walk-in freezer. Those were his last words to his friend: Whoever he was staying with was able to jimmy the electricity on. They had this nice freezer.”)

The arrestee made a court appearance and remains at the Whalley Avenue lock-up on $500,000 bond, at least until his next scheduled court date on Sept. 1. But even if he should manage to favorably resolve his legal troubles and go free, Alpha Dog will most certainly have to find a new home.

By the time Alpha Dog has his court date, Robert Smith hopes to have concluded the deal with the Salvation Army and started the process of transforming the former outpost for the down and out into a magnet for New Haven’s newest wave of urban pioneers.