Castro: House rescuer has a “bad attitude.”
Gil Marshak is ready to buy a blighted Fair Haven home from the city, kick out the hookers, clean up the trash, gut rehab the rooms, and rent or sell it to a family. The local alderwoman won’t let him.
The alderwoman, Migdalia Castro, has held up the deal since last summer. She said Thursday she is blocking the sale of 155 Poplar St. to Marshak because she doesn’t appreciate his “bad attitude.” She said she would rather see an owner-occupier move in. No one else bid on the property, and no potential owner-occupiers have contacted the city.
But Castro said she knows someone who may be interested: Celestino Cordova, her Democratic Ward Committee co-chair. (Asked about that, Cordova said he’s not able to buy the house.)
The city last year proposed selling the two-family home to Marshak (pictured above) and his business partner Oren Bitman for $17,500. The proposal has been pending before the Board of Aldermen since August. The Hamden-based pair own 30 properties in Fair Haven and are currently fixing up the former Lehman Brothers factory in East Rock.
The deal sits in limbo in part because by tradition, the board allows a neighborhood’s representative to block local deals. Meanwhile, trespassers have continued to use the home to do drugs, turn tricks, and dump truckloads of trash, according to city officials.
A tour of the site Thursday found the house in dire condition.
Laurie Lopez, the neighborhood specialist for the Livable City Initiative, the city’s anti-blight agency, stepped into the driveway to check out the trash. LCI has cleared tons of garbage from the property, including diapers, construction debris and hundreds of tires.
She stepped around a melted garbage bin, the victim of a fire in the past week.
Lopez has been regularly checking on the property over the past few years. The city bought it out of foreclosure in 2010, when it had already sat vacant for one or two years. The 2,226-square-foot building was built in 1900.
Before the city put a cement block in front of the driveway, trucks used to drive in and unload trash behind the house. LCI staffers’ efforts appeared to be holding in the yard, which was relatively clean compared to the historic dumping there.
Inside the house was another story.
Green mold flourished on the front steps.
The porch held remnants of a makeshift bed.
Crumbled sheetrock and broken glass covered the stairs to the second floor. Marshak said he didn’t realize how bad the house was until he went inside for the first time. He found feces on the walls and rubble everywhere.
Vandals tore up the walls to strip the house of copper. They cut all the electrical wires.
An unhinged door lay skewed in a trash-strewn kitchen.
A mattress lay in a front room next to ripped-up sheetrock and a white stuffed bunny.
“There’s no way to salvage anything,” Marshak said. “It needs a gut rehab.”
On the way down the staircase, a broken stained-glass window yields a view of a burned-out house across the street, where three people died in an arson in March of last year.
Marshak said he’s willing to spend $80,000 to fix up the house — if the alderwoman will let him.
Reached Thursday, Castro said she opposes selling the property to Marshak and his partner because she believes they have a “bad attitude” and because she would like to see someone from the neighborhood move in as a homeowner. By “bad attitude,” she said, she was referring in part to the way Marshak went ahead to pave land he didn’t own yet; and to “disrespect” he displayed when she tried to talk to him.
“I wanted it to be owner-occupied,” she said. Castro said she’s concerned that after the developers fix up the house, it would be too expensive for people from the neighborhood to buy it. Over the years she has watched the percentage of homeownership decline from 50 to approximately 25 percent.
No not-for-profit housing agencies or owner-occupiers bid on, or expressed interest in buying, the home, according to Frank D’Amore, LCI’s deputy director.
D’Amore said Marshak was the only bidder on the property. Marshak and Bitman own 30 rental properties in Fair Haven. They employ four local workers to fix them up.
Fair Haven workers Rafael Muriel, Carlos Rosario and Sanford Orlasco take a lunch break with their boss, Marshak.
The workers, who live in Fair Haven and on nearby Qunnipiac Avenue, have been rehabbing 258 Poplar in recent weeks. A recent visit found them up on a roof, removing shingles. On Thursday, brand new shingles sat in place. The workers were taking a lunch break from fixing up the second and third floor apartments.
D’Amore said Marshak and Bitman have a strong track record in the neighborhood. The Hamden-based partners have invested $1.5 million into rehabbing Fair Haven homes.
For example, D’Amore pointed to 47 Monroe St., which the developers bought after it was abandoned for 10 years. It was so ridden with drug needles and blood that they had to hire a hazmat team to clean it up. They fixed it up and sold it to an owner-occupier in January.
D’Amore checked out the transformed house earlier this year.
“I was really impressed,” he said. “These guys checked out, there’s no doubt. I’m comfortable they have the ability, the financing and the wherewithal” to take on 155 Poplar.
D’Amore said Marshak’s bid was sufficient, “but the alderwoman doesn’t support it.”
“I’m just not 100 percent sure why,” D’Amore said. “Maybe she’d like to see someone she knows take it, I don’t know.”
155 Poplar.
Marshak said Thursday that he had plans to rent out 155 Poplar. But “if this is a big political issue,” he’d be willing to sell the home to an owner-occupant, he said. He said he would rehab it up to city code and sell it for $130,000.
Marshak was skeptical that any owner-occupier could find the money to fix up the home on his or her own. The owner would have to hire an outside contractor, whereas Marshak hires workers directly and oversees the work, he said.
“Nobody’s going to give them a loan.”
Marshak said he finances his work through investors from Israel. He said he’s not an evil outsider out to make a quick buck — he lives in Hamden, pays close to $100,000 in New Haven property taxes, and plans to rent his properties long-term. In response to a concern that he’d flip the home to another investor, he said, “This is not a market to flip.”
He said he’s friendly with his tenants and “if they want to buy, I’m always willing to talk to them.”
Castro said she plans to ask the city to set up a conversation with people in the neighborhood who’d like to buy the home. She mentioned only one person who’s interested — Celestino Cordova, the longtime co-chair of the Democratic Ward Committee in Castro’s Ward 16.
As she holds out hope for an owner-occupant, Castro has held up the Marshak deal for over six months. The deal was submitted to the Board of Aldermen last summer. In an unusual move for a land disposition, aldermen referred the item to the Community Development Committee on Aug. 1.
The committee met on Nov. 16 to consider the deal. At that meeting, neighbor Jose Mejias of Poplar Street spoke in favor of the sale, because “rehabs of blighted buildings reduce blight and crime,” according to minutes from the meeting. Marshak appeared before the committee; D’Amore spoke in favor of fixing up the home and getting it back on the tax rolls.
Castro, who was not present at the meeting, “requested the chair to pass over this item,” according to the minutes.
The proposal then bounced between legislative bodies without any action taken. The full Board of Aldermen passed over the item on Nov. 16, then on Dec. 5 sent it back to committee. The committee met again on Dec. 21 and took no action on the item.
“It was noted that the ward Alderperson, Castro, opposes this matter and the committee decided to pass over it,” the minutes read. No action has been taken since then.
D’Amore said the deal now sits at a “roadblock.”
He said he has sought legal counsel on how to proceed.
He said Castro relayed that Cordova is interested in the property, but “I haven’t received anything from him — not an application, not a plan.”
The political connection between Castro and Cordova makes the situation tricky, he added. “I’d want to get an opinion as to how we go about that.”
“I’m not feeling comfortable” about the whole thing, because of Cordova’s political affiliation, and because he hasn’t heard a word from Cordova.
Reached Thursday evening, Cordova said he was interested in the home at one point, but he decided not to try to buy it.
“I think it would not be good for me because of the area that it is,” he said. He added that he needs to buy a home that’s ready to live in, not one that he would have to fix up. He said he does know some local people who are interested in buying it.
Meanwhile, D’Amore said he’s not sure what to do next. “I don’t see any reason to put this back out to bid. I have a legitimate buyer who went through the process.”
Castro said her discontent with the developer stemmed from the proposed sale of a sliver lot at 350 Poplar, next to a house that Marshak’s family owns. The city proposed selling it to Marshak because the other adjacent property owner didn’t want it. Marshak put in a brand new driveway before the deal went through.
Castro said Marshak “disrespected” the neighborhood.
“They just want to dictate what’s going to happen,” without proper approvals, she said.
Marshak responded that he had made an improvement to the property for free. If someone else wants to buy the lot and take care of it, he said, they are free to do so.
Castro blocked the sale of that sliver lot, just as she is blocking the sale of the other home.
As the proposed sale of 155 Poplar languishes in committee, D’Amore said, “it’s not helping any of the adjacent property owners. It’s not helping anyone who lives there.” It’s sitting tax-free and costing the city to maintain.
“This house should be occupied by now,” remarked Oren Bitman (at right in photo with Marshak).
He said the pair could have rehabbed the home in four months. Now it risks demolition.
“If the property stays like this much longer, I hate to say it, we’re probably going to wind up taking it down,” D’Amore said. Demolition would cost an estimated $18,000 to $25,000.
“It’s going to get to the point where it’s not worth anything,” D’Amore said.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Castro is destroying the neighborhood, and the City, for her own personal gain.