$4.1M Sale Turns Q Club Into Biohaven

In a reflection of the changing makeup of New Haven’s business sector, a locally based, publicly traded biopharmaceutical company has purchased the historic Quinnipiack Club building on Church Street for $4.1 million.

According to New Haven’s land records database, on Dec. 10, Biohaven Pharmaceuticals Inc. bought the five-story, Colonial Revival-style clubhouse at 221 Church St. and the adjacent surface parking lot at 280 Orange St. for $4.1 million.

Biohaven is a ​“clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company” that develops drugs targeting ​“neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases,” according to the company’s website. It’s one of several players in New Haven’s booming, Yale-research-fueled bioscience economy.

Biohaven’s current headquarters are right next door at 215 Church St., a two-story former bank building that the company bought for $2.7 million in 2018. The company has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2017, and currently has a market capitalization of well over $8 billion.

The seller of the Quinnipiack Club building in this most recent transaction was 221 Church Street LLC — a holding company controlled by local financial advisor and Quinnipiack Club member Charles Noble III. 

A different holding company controlled by Noble first purchased the Q Club building back in 2010 for $1,940,000. The city last appraised the 221 Church St. property as worth $5,491,200, and the 280 Orange St. parking lot as worth $245,500.

What this most recent sale spells for the future of the 1930-built downtown clubhouse is still uncertain, as Biohaven did not respond to multiple requests for comment before the publication time of this article. 

In a phone interview with the Independent Thursday afternoon, however, the building’s former owner — Charles Noble III — shed some light on why he ultimately sold the building, what he thinks its future might be, and what he loved most about the Q Club in its heyday. 

Noble told the Independent that the former Quinnipiack Club building has been vacant since December 2019.

That’s when the Elm City Club​’s lease at 221 Church St. ended, and they decided to consolidate their operations of the former Quinnipiack Club and Graduate Club into the Grad Club’s space on Elm Street. 

Elm City Club is the name of the entity that managed the Quinnipiack and Graduate Clubs after the two downtown private eateries merged in 2012. Click here for a New Haven Independent article about that merger, and featuring interviews with Yale political science professor Douglas Rae and New Haven State Rep. Pat Dillon on the century-long history of the Q Club and on the declining fortunes of exclusive, urban private eating clubs more broadly. 

Elm City Club manager Sandy Gervais told the Independent Thursday afternoon that her organization didn’t renew its lease at the former Quinnipiack Club building two years ago because ​“it needed a tremendous amount of repairs” and wasn’t making any money for club.

With the Church Street building empty and unused back, Noble remembered, he decided it was time to sell.

“I did not actively attempt to market the building,” he said. ​“I just entertained a number of offers from various parties.”

And offers did come in. Ultimately, he picked Biohaven. 

Not because the $4.1 million they put on the table was the highest amount he could get for the building.

But rather because he believes that the downtown pharmaceutical company has ​“the capital and the vision to restore the club, and liven that block up in a way that would do justice to the building itself, and the city.”

How might Biohaven ultimately use that 1930-built former clubhouse?

“They see this as an ability for them to expand and essentially have a downtown campus for their business,” Noble said. 

Since buying the 215 Church St. building next door several years ago, he said, Biohaven has had ​“visiting executives, scientists, and dozens of interns pass through their headquarters. They see this as a potential to expand and have a more functional” downtown space. (A representative from Biohaven did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.)

What does Noble remember most about the former Q Club, which he first became a member of in the early 1980s?

“It was really a wonderful and convivial place to meet other people,” he said. ​“Back then, when there were fewer good restaurants in New Haven, it was the predictable place to go. The food was fabulous. The service was excellent.”

He said that locally based companies like Southern New England Telephone maintained overnight guestrooms at the Q Club, which is where they did nearly all of their entertaining and hosted business lunches. That type of corporate patronage of the Q Club fell off significantly after a 1980s change to the federal tax code that reduced the deductibility of club memberships, he said.

Noble also recalled all of the ​“dignitaries” he met and heard about staying at the Q Club during his decades’ long membership. Those included former President Bill Clinton, renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, and members of the Israeli Supreme Court. (Noble said the latter group stayed at the Q Club multiple times because their security detail found it the easiest place to guard the justices during their trips to New Haven to speak at Yale Law School events.)

Noble said that, at its peak, the Q Club had roughly 650 members. By the time that the Elm City Club vacated the building in December 2019, he said, there were roughly 275 members between the two combined entities.

“It has appeared over the years that New Haven is ​‘over-clubbed,’ ” he said, referencing not just the Q Club and the Graduate Club, but also Mory’s, the New Haven Lawn Club, and the New Haven Country Club. That’s ​“a lot of clubs per capita.” 

Thus the impetus to merge the Q and Graduate Clubs back in 2012, he said. But even with that merger, the old Q Club building just couldn’t seem to survive.

Still, Noble remembers fondly, at its height, the Q Club was ​“the center of New Haven’s business life.”

The website for the real estate firm Susan Hotchkiss Homes states that the Q Club building’s owner first put the property up for sale in October 2020.

“An unbelievable opportunity to purchase a New Haven Landmark,” that real estate listing states. ​“This iconic building, formerly the venerable Quinnipiack Club, has played host to decades of the Elm City’s most prestigious business leaders and visitors and now it is available for redevelopment. The possibilities are endless, but with an unmatched location at the steps to Yale University and 1.2 miles from Union Station, ideal uses include multi-unit residential, hospitality, commercial, or corporate office. This high visibility property offers easily converted guestrooms, a plethora of richly appointed meeting space and 27 onsite parking spaces. 221 Church Street is ideally situated in the heart of the Central Business District just steps to local, state, and federal courthouses as well as biotech corporate offices and New Haven’s largest office buildings.”

As recently as Nov. 9 of last year, the real estate company Wm. M Hotchkiss Company listed 221 Church St. on its Facebook page as still up for sale.

The New Haven Building Archive’s online database, meanwhile, provides a wealth of historical and architectural details about the private club building — which was designed by Douglas Orr, and is on the site of the former Winston J. Trowbridge House. 

The Q club itself was started in 1871 as a ​“men’s city club” designed to provide ​“its members camaraderie and a respectable urban living space,” according to the building archive profile page. That archive description continues:

It was founded at a time when this type of club was becoming increasingly popular, not just at Yale and in New Haven, but also in metropolitan cities across the globe, such as London, New York, and Washington. The building housed the club’s café, served as a meeting place for the club and provided residence to a number of members. During the 1920’s, members sought a new location because their old club location — the Darling House on Chapel Street — was constantly in need of costly repairs. They purchased the site at 221 Church in the mid-1920’s and contracted Douglas Orr as the architect for their new house. The building was completed in 1930 at a cost of about $250,000. Club meetings in the new location began in 1931.

The ​“Q Clubhouse” Facebook Page offers its own take on the club’s origins and changes over the decades in a post from February 2017. 

See below for that write-up, and above for photos of the interior of the club — including of the ​“duck pin bowling” alley in the basement — as posted to that same Facebook page:

In 1871, 20 young men, who were charter members, met to form a club, and called it the ​“Ours” Club. They rented two rooms in the Hoadley Building at the corner of Church and Crown Streets. They could hardly have envisioned today’s Q Club with its chimneyed dignity and its Georgian-wrapped comforts shouldered in between high office buildings. 

The transformation from ​“Ours”, a limited social club, to Quinnipiack, a modern community club, had come about in little more than six years. The Quinnipiack Club and its members had defined a role which they followed soberly and perhaps even righteously.

On August 11, 1930, the building committee presented before the governors a series of ​“lantern slides” showing interior and exterior plans and designs for the new building. The general style of the building is Georgian along purely traditional lines. It was designed to resemble a large colonial house with a rear wing. Structurally, however, it is a steel frame fireproof building. 

The Quinnipiack Club continued to operate in that building until 2012 when the club ceased operations and became part of the Graduate Club. The Graduate Club was eventually renamed The Elm City Club with two clubhouses, The Graduate Clubhouse and The Q Clubhouse. The Elm City Club is a Premiere Club in downtown New Haven.