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The 3 Judges, now under new ownership.
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Ishan Dave: New owner of 2 New Haven motels.
Ishan Dave moved from India to the United States in pursuit of his version of the “American dream”: to buy and run hotels he could be proud of.
He’s now the co-owner of two motels in a crime-hotspot stretch of the New Haven-Woodbridge border — where he’s working to fix the properties up into safer, cleaner places to stay where, yes, all of the rooms are finally open.
Dave is one of the co-owners of a company called Dreamland Hospitality.
According to a warranty deed posted to the city’s land records database on July 16, Dreamland Hotels LLC bought the Three Judges Motor Lodge at 1560 Whalley Ave. for $1.55 million from Three Judges Motel LLC.
That two-story, 36-room motel right off of the Wilbur Cross Parkway last sold for $500,000 in 1997. The city most recently appraised it for tax purposes as worth $728,900, or less than half the price it wound up selling for earlier this month.
The new owner of the Three Judges is a holding company controlled by Ishan Dave, as well as Maltiben Dave and Hitesh Dave, all three of whom live in Cheshire. The seller is a holding company controlled by Bharti Shah of Woodbridge and Divyang Shah of North Haven.
This isn’t the first time that Ishan Dave’s company has bought one of the city’s handful of motels clustered on the far west side of town.
In December 2020, a Dave-controlled holding company called Dreamland Hospital LLC purchased the Best Way Inn at 45 Pond Lily Ave. — located right around the corner from the Three Judges — for $1.7 million from the Shah-controlled Courtesy Inn LLC. That property was appraised by the city for tax purposes at the time as worth $1,140,900.
West Hills motels like the Three Judges have been used by the Livable City Initiative (LCI) to temporarily house New Haveners displaced from their homes for health and safety reasons. Neighbors have long criticized those properties for being hubs of crime and disorder.
In a phone interview with the Independent for this article, Dave said that he’s hoping to turn around the reputation and reality of the motels he now owns.
He said his company installed new shower systems and LED lights, painted rooms and replaced TVs, and repaved the whole parking lot at the Best Way Inn. After buying that property four years ago, when only around 25 rooms were in good enough condition to be occupied, he said that now all 47 rooms at the Best Way Inn are open.
Dave said he has similar ambitions for the recently purchased Three Judges. “It’s pretty much the same story. Our goal is to get all the rooms” open again — from the currently open 25 to the maximum capacity of 36. That will entail painting, detailing, and cleaning cleaning cleaning the property: To start, it “should be all odor-free, clean carpets, shampooed carpets.” It’ll also involving repairing rooms damaged by arson.
Dave said he moved from Gujarat in western India to the United States a little more than a decade ago.
“Growing up, all my dad’s siblings were in the U.S. They were in the hotel industry as well,” he said. “It was my American dream to come to the U.S. and get into the hotel industry.”
Because of “financial limitations,” he said, he hasn’t been able to buy a bigger hotel. Yet.
Instead, at 19 years old, he started working “minimum wage” jobs at the Regal Inn and Beverage Boss, saving up money. He then got an associates degree at Gateway, got a Bachelor’s from Southern, and then an MBA at SUNY Albany.
What’s he learned from his time in the hotel/motel business so far?
Too many hotels are “lacking technology.” Being “more technology friendly” is good for business.
Asked for comment about the latest with crime at the motels on the far west side of town, and if he’s noticed any differences at the Best Way Inn since Dave took ownership, top neighborhood cop Lt. Brian McDermott told the Independent that all four motels in the area — New Haven Inn, Best Way Inn, Regal Inn and 3 Judges — “have experienced their share of problems.”
“The owners of the Bestway Inn have made some physical improvements to the property and 3 Judges could certainly benefit from a similar effort,” he wrote. “Unfortunately I don’t believe there is enough legitimate demand in this area for four motels, and I anticipate a vice seeking clientele will continue to drive business for all four locations.”