Bank-To-Nightclub Plan Collapses

Plans to convert the former Connecticut Savings Bank on Church Street into a venue for late-night dancing and drinking have fallen apart — leading the marble-columned, long-vacant downtown commercial building to return to the rental market.

In a Tuesday phone interview, David Kuperberg, the landlord whose New Jersey-based company has owned 45 Church St. since 2016, confirmed the ex-bank building won’t be turned into ​“The Vault” nightclub after all.

“The tenants defaulted,” he said about the people he had lined up to operate the proposed club. ​“They didn’t come up with the funds necessary” to renovate the space or pay rent. ​“They didn’t pay anything.” So he dissolved the lease agreement last month and took back the keys to the building.

A commercial real estate listing on the website LoopNet identifies all three floors of the former bank building at 45 Church St. as up for lease at a rent of $18 per square foot per year.

This latest turn for the long-vacant former bank building comes after the Board of Zoning Appeals and the City Plan Commission both signed off last fall on plans to turn just under 5,000 square feet of the building’s first floor into a bar, nightclub, and event space. The venue was going to be called The Vault, and was going to be run by Alexandra Arpi and The Vault NH LLC. It would have had live music and been open until 2 a.m. on weekends. 

Now that particular plan is no more, even if the nightclub use approvals by the Board of Zoning Appeals and City Plan Commission remain in place.

Arpi could not be reached for comment for this article.

“It’s a great spot for a nightclub. It’s a beautiful space,” Kuperberg said about the Classical Revival former bank building that was built in 1907 and used to house Connecticut Savings Bank. 

He lamented that the collapse of this nightclub plan is the latest of the ​“trials and tribulations” of trying to rent this space out, following the City Plan Commission’s rejection last July of a previous applicant’s bid to turn that ex-bank site into a recreational cannabis dispensary. ​“I guess we’ve had a couple of cases of bad luck.”

While Kuperberg is now looking again for a tenant to rent out and operate a business out of the former bank he owns at Church and Crown streets, he’s also still looking for commercial tenants for another ex-bank space he owns up at Church and Elm — the former Union Trust building at 205 Church.

“We’ve had quite a bit of interest” for that 17,000-plus square-foot ground-floor commercial space, he said. But, ​“we haven’t had the right mix,” and so haven’t signed any leases with any particular tenants yet.

Ideally, he said, he’d find an anchor tenant for 6,000 square feet of that space, and then subdivide the rest among other tenants. He’s looking out in particular for a restaurant. ​“So far, only one restaurant” operator has expressed interest in the space. ​“It didn’t work out. I’m not dead set that it has to be one.” But he would like a use that brings life to that prime New Haven corner not just during the work day.