221, 215, and 209 Church (with green ex-bank awning), now all now owned by Biohaven.
Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded company, bought its third building on the same block of Church Street, transforming the commercial mission of a downtown block once known for banking.
Biohaven spent $2.35 million purchasing the former Citizens Bank building at 209 Church St., according to a warranty deed posted to the city’s land records database on May 8.
The property’s seller, a holding company controlled by Dennis Nicotra of Olympia Properties, previously bought the building in 2020 for $1.7 million. The city most recently appraised it for tax purposes as worth more than $3.1 million.
Biohaven’s purchase of the two-story former bank building at 209 Church means that it now owns three adjacent properties on that same block of Church between Elm and Wall streets.
The company acquired the two-story former bank building next door at 215 Church St. in 2018 for $2.7 million, and has converted that site into Biohaven’s New Haven headquarters. It then bought the five-story former Quinnipiack Club building at 221 Church St. in 2022 for $4.1 million, as part of what that property’s seller described at the time as an intended expansion of Biohaven’s downtown campus.
Founded in 2013, Biohaven develops drugs designed to address neurological conditions such as migraines, spinal muscular atrophy and obsessive compulsive disorder. The company, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2017, was acquired by Pfizer in October 2022 for around $11.6 billion. Its website lists its corporate address as in the (tax haven) British Virgin Islands, and its U.S. address as at 215 Church.
Biohaven is one of several players in New Haven’s booming bioscience economy with deep connections to Yale. Its CEO, Vlad Coric, is a graduate of the Yale Psychiatry Residency Program and is president of the Yale Psychiatry Alumni Association.
In a writeup published by the Yale School of Medicine’s website in 2020 after U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy named Biohaven his office’s “Innovator of the Month,” Coric is quoted as describing New Haven as “an ideal location for Biohaven given its proximity to Yale and highly skilled pharmaceutical talent that sits in the geographic corridor between New York and Boston.”
A representatives from Biohaven declined to comment about the company’s purchase of 209 Church.
In response to a question about the company’s corporate address being located in the British Virgin Islands, a representative from a healthcare communications firm told the Independent on behalf of Biohaven that the pharmaceutical company’s parent company , Biohaven, Ltd., is “a business company limited by shares organized under the laws of the British Virgin Islands.” He wrote that the company’s U.S. subsidiary’s office is at 215 Church St. in New Haven, and that Biohaven also has offices in Cambridge, Mass., Pittsburgh, Penn., Yardley, Penn., and Dublin, Ireland.
Outside Biohaven's 215 Church HQ ...
... text scrawled on the side of the Biohaven's recently acquired building at 209 Church ...
... brick brick brick, and bio, as viewed from 215 Church.