Paul Bass photo
Fowler: “4 years of bogus litigation” precipitated sale.
Christopher Peak file photo
The old Comcast building at 630 Chapel St.
After overcoming a half-decade of hurdles to develop the former Comcast site and a nearby lot, one of New Haven’s busiest developers flipped the properties for nearly five times their initial purchase price to a Houston-based global development firm, in the city’s latest property transactions.
According to the city’s online land records database, on Nov. 7, Spinnaker Residential LLC, a holding company owned by Clay Flower’s Norwalk-based company Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, sold the former Comcast building at 630 Chapel St. and a vacant parking lot at 673 Chapel St. to Chapel Street Residences Owner LLC for a combined sum of $14.6 million.
The former Comcast site made up $10.45 million of that sale, while the vacant lot across the street made up the remaining $4.1 million.
Spinnaker spent $3.3 million buying the two parcels in 2015. According to the city assessor’s database, the two parcels were last appraised by the city as worth a combined sum of $3.325 million.
Spinnaker has been planning on building over 200 luxury apartments on the site: 166 apartments at 630 Chapel and 66 apartments at 673 Chapel.
Chapel Street Residence Owner LLC, which bought the two properties from Spinnaker, is a holding company owned by the Houston-based Hines development firm.
Grant Jaber, a Fairfield County-based managing director for multi-family development for Hines, confirmed that the company is planning on sticking with the project plans initially developed by Spinnaker.
“We intend to move forward with the development,” he said. “We plan to stick with what’s approved. We really look forward to working with the city and the Wooster Square neighborhood.”
He said this will be Hines’s first planned development for the New Haven city and the region. The company also recently purchased a similarly-sized project in Westchester County, N.Y., he said.
Over the past decade, he said, Hines has built over 12,000 units of multi-family housing across the United States.
“We see value in places like New Haven where there’s a ‘micro-story’ with permanent institutions like Yale and, of course, Yale New Haven Hospital that help drive the local economy,” he said. “And we believe in the growth of the nearby suburbs that are also commutable” to larger cities like Boston and New York City.
Fowler told the Independent in a comment by text message that his company sold the two sites so that it can “focus on Coliseum project.” Spinnaker has been one of the most bullish builders in New Haven in recent years, from the hundreds of new apartments at the Audubon Square complex at Audubon and Orange Street to a planned new Hilton Garden Inn hotel at the former Webster Bank building on Elm Street to a planned new urbanist mini-city at the old Coliseum site.
Fowler also said by text that “expenditures for approvals and 4 years of bogus litigation from PMC elevated our costs significantly.”
After Spinnaker bought the properties in 2015, the city and Spinnaker spent four of the intervening nearly five years fighting court battle after court battle with the Philadelphia-based PMC Property Group, Inc., which owns the adjacent Strouse Adler “Smoothie” apartment building and which sought to hold up Spinnaker’s development with a series of lawsuits. That legal conflict was finally resolved in Nov. 2018 — four years to the month after Spinnaker first won regulatory approval from the City Plan Commission to convert the two parcels into over 200 new luxury apartments.
This September, Spinnaker won a five-year extension from the City Plan Commission for those luxury residential development plans.
Two months later, it flipped the two properties to Hines.
The two properties are slated to be included in the city’s tax assessment deferral program. The current program allows developers to transfer tax assessment deferral benefit between one another when a property is sold. If city staff-proposed revisions to the program pass the Board of Alders later this year, that transfer benefit will be prohibited for future projects.
Mandy Picks Up 33 Apartments
City assessor’s database
185 Thompson St.
In other recent property sales news, the holding companies associated with the local mega-landlord Mandy Management spent a total of $2.195 million buying 33 apartments in eight different buildings, mostly in Newhallville.
“We remain committed to all of New Haven’s neighborhoods,” Mandy property manager Yudi Gurevitch told the Independent in an emailed statement. “We continue to grow our portfolio and continue to provide safe and affordable housing throughout New Haven County.”
On Nov. 4, ABCD Properties LLC, a holding company owned by the Belgium-based Concorde Finance that lists Mandy Management as its business entity agent, bought the 11-unit apartment building at 185 Thompson St. from Walter Valeriano for $587,500. The city last appraised the property as worth $425,800.
On that same day, ABCD Properties LLC. also purchased the eight-unit apartment building at 477 Dixwell Ave. from Valeriano for $537,500. The city last appraised the property as worth $389,600.
Just up the block, ABCD Properties LLC then purchased the three-family house at 483 Dixwell Ave. from Joan Valeriano for $270,000. The city last appraised the property as worth $191,700.
That same day, ABCD properties LLC purchased a three-family house at 83 Gibbs St. from Joan Valeriano for $230,000. The city last appraised the property as worth $165,700.
Previous property sale coverage:
• Sherman Medical Building Sells For $2.7M
• Pike, Mandy Spend $2M+ In Latest Buys
• 200+ Apartments Planned At Empty Eyesore
• Annex Apartments Sold For $3.95M
• Mill River Office Building Sold For $4.65M
• Local Landlords, Albertus Magnus Expand
• Mandy Buys Warehouse For $1.6M
• Pike Collects $890K On Wooster Sq. Sales
• Springside Apartments Sell For $3.2M
• Family Dollar Sells For 1.8M Dollars
• Pike Sells 2 Buildings To Yale For $3.8M
• Mansion Sells For Only $1.45M
• Landlord Tops 340 Units
• High Street Apts Sell For $25M+
• St. Michael’s School Sold, For Apartments
• Ocean Management Acquires Perrotti Westville Properties
• Paris Realty Picks Up 6 Q Meadows Condos
• Landlord Boosts West River Condo Holdings
• $21 Million Changes Hands In 2 Days
• 50 Factory Jobs Coming To Fair Haven
• Brendan Towers Sold For $6M+
• Investors Drop $917K On West Side Condos
• Mandy’s 2018 Buying Spree Nears $13M
• Mandy Empire Buys Up The Block
• Roots Planted In Newhallville
• Latest Sales: Mandy Buying Spree Continues
• Latest Sales: Mandy Expands In City Point
• Latest Sales: East Rock Home Buy Tops $1M
• Latest Deals: Beulah’s 5th Rehab On Block
• Latest Sales: NHR Sheds Small To Focus Big
• Latest Sales: Mandy Buys In Heights
• Home Sale Price Doubles In 13 Years