Thomas Breen file photo
45 Church St.: Get ready to club.
Those looking to boogie in a vacant former bank may soon be in luck — now that a new nightclub called “The Vault” has received its final needed city approval to open in the marble-columned confines of the ex-Connecticut Savings Bank on Church Street.
Local land-use commissioners took that vote Wednesday night during the latest regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission, which was held online via Zoom.
The commissioners voted unanimously in support of the site plan submitted by applicants Ruth Alexandra Arpi and The Vault NH LLC to convert the ground floor of 45 Church St. into a bar/cafe/nightclub.
That long-empty Classical Revival former bank building was built in 1907, used to be home to the Connecticut Savings Bank, and has been owned since 2016 by a holding company controlled by David Kuperberg.
Wednesday’s site plan vote came roughly a month after the Board of Zoning Appeals granted this same applicant a special exception to operate a nightclub / cafe / bar in just under 5,000 square feet of the building’s first floor. And it followed the City Plan Commission’s rejection in July of a previous applicant’s bid to turn that ex-bank site into a recreational cannabis dispensary.
Zoom photo
At Wednesday night's Zoomed City Plan Commission meeting.
“This building, which I’m sure you all are aware of, is a grand architectural building at the corner of Crown and Church Street. It’s unfortunately been vacant for decades,” applicant’s representative John Pollard told the commissioners on Wednesday.
He said that Arpi plans to open the space back up as a “cafe, bar, nightclub which will also be used as an event space.” The club will be known as “The Vault.”
It will be open from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on weekdays, and from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekends, he said.
“It will be a space that will have music. It will have dancing, a bar. It will have catered food.”
The applicants and owner do not plan on making any changes to the exterior of the building, he said, besides adding an ADA-accessible ramp to the southeast corner facing Crown Street. The building’s main entrance will still be on Church Street. “There is an existing wide-glass entrance that will be refurbished” on Church, he said. “It will be in much better shape than it has been in for decades.”
Inside, he reiterated, the building’s ground floor will be converted into a cafe, nightclub, bar. The proposed operators “are very good at using the social media,” Pollard said. “They’ve already been getting requests for use of the space. They can’t get it open fast enough for the demand that’s already popping up.”
He said they’ve been contacted to see if The Vault could be open in time for this year’s Yale-Harvard football game. Alas, no, he said, that’s too soon. But the next time the game rolls around, perhaps.
Thomas Breen file photos
Just to make clear, commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe asked, will this proposed new nightclub operate in the entire three-story building?
No, Pollard said. Just on the ground floor. “The upper floors will not be part of the leased space.”
The commissioners wound up voting unanimously in support.
“We look forward” to this space being put back to use, Radcliffe said. She added, with a smile, “I might even have to pull out the dancing shoes” when The Vault opens up.