Mandy Plans 23 Upscale Aptartments for Wooster Square

One of the city’s largest private landlord groups plans to convert three vacant Wooster Square former church buildings into 23 upscale apartments, pending zoning approval of the church’s request to correct a faulty property line.

Frank Micali, the chief investment officer of Netz Group, told the 50 neighbors present at Tuesday night’s regular monthly Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) meeting on the second floor of City Hall that his company is under contract to purchase three vacant buildings owned by St. Michael’s Church and convert them into 23 one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments.

Netz, a real estate private equity firm that is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, is owned in part by Menachem Gurevitch, the man behind the local real estate empire Mandy Management. Micali said that Netz, a $135 million development firm, was chartered in New Haven.

“I understand the fabric of New Haven pretty well, especially from a development standpoint,” said Micali, who has worked in real estate in the Elm City for the past 29 years.

Micali told the management team that Netz plans to convert St. Michael’s former convent and two former school buildings at 234, 240, and 250 Greene St. into 23 new apartments. He said the apartments will range from 900 to 1,500 square feet, and will likely rent at between $1,800 and $2,400 per month.

“We need to make it a higher end project in order to make it work under such small circumstances,” he said.

In 2014, the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) turned down an application from St. Michael’s Church and the New York-based development company Mod Equities, which wanted to convert the three buildings into 39 separate apartments. At the time, city zoning director Tom Talbot said that the 39-unit proposal was too dense for the three properties in question.

“We met with Tom [Talbot],” Micali said about Netz’s new proposal. ​“He was very happy to hear of the density, that we’re so low.”

Micali said that Netz also plans to convert the school’s former gym into an indoor parking garage with 19 parking spaces, leaving the site with 32 parking spaces total. It plans to convert the former playground on top of the gym-turned-garage into an amenity space with trees, gardens, and grills for the building’s tenants. He said the company has contracted with the Crown Street firm Buchanan Associates to design the project.

Netz is under contract to purchase the property from St. Michael’s. Micali said that the purchase is contingent upon St. Michael’s getting approval at next month’s BZA meeting for their request to redraw the property line separating the church’s still active rectory at 29 Wooster Pl. and the Greene Street properties it plans to sell.

Micali, along with St. Michael’s Finance Committee chair Frank Gargano and trustee Anna Festa (who is also an alder for East Rock), said that the city assessor’s map currently incorrectly places the church’s rectory within one of the Greene Street addresses, as opposed to the Wooster Place address. The church’s application to be heard during November’s BZA meeting is for the city to redraw the property line so that the church’s rectory is not included in one of the Greene Street properties that the church plans to sell.

“We as a parish are excited that we have a New Haven developer that will come in and beautify the area and avoid squatters that have been trying to break into some of the buildings,” Festa said.

Gargano said that, in the past six weeks alone, the church’s vacant properties have had five break-ins. Micali said that, in the two weeks since Netz and St. Michael’s signed a contract for the property sale, Netz has hired security to patrol the building four times a day: once in the afternoon and three times at night.

“We have to preserve it at this point because they’re trying to steal copper,” he said. ​“We need a building to start on.”

Micali promised to come back to the DWSCMT’s November meeting with renderings for the proposed development.