92 Apts OK’d For 129 Church St. Office Building

A development duo won unanimous city approval to convert an eight-story commercial building downtown into 92 new market-rate apartments.

That vote came Wednesday night during the latest regular monthly City Plan Commission meeting, held online via Zoom.

The local land-use commissioners unanimously signed off on a site plan application by MOD Equities’ Jacob and Josef Feldman to convert the eight-story, 45-unit office building at 129 Church St. into 92 studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments.

Local attorney Gregory Muccilli explained that the historic downtown building, which was built around 1912 and was once home to the Second New Haven National Bank, has seen a pandemic-induced exodus of commercial and office tenants.

“The pandemic has caused a significant reduction in the need for office space,” he said Wednesday night. ​“It’s unsustainable for MOD to keep this solely in commercial use.”

So, Jacob Feldman told the commissioners, his company plans to make the building almost entirely residential.

The first two floors will remain reserved for commercial and office use, he said, while the subsequent seven stories will hold between 12 and 14 apartments each. (The building’s current ground floor and mezzanine are currently counted by the city as one story. In the finished building, Feldman said, they will be two distinct floors.)

The developer has already signed an agreement with the city parking authority to lease 42 parking spaces for tenants at the nearby 270 State St. public garage. The converted building will also include a fitness center, a game room, a community room, and a lobby.

“We spent a lot of effort trying to make the building a community building” since buying it in 2015, Feldman said. ​“It’s a unique office building, with a lot of small office spaces. There are no real large, massive tenants in the building. That’s what attracted us to the building. At the same time, that’s what proved to be extremely difficult during the pandemic,” for many of the smaller commercial tenants opted to work from home and not renew their leases.

It’s been a ​“very difficult year” for this downtown office space, Feldman said.

He said the planned conversion will see virtually no exterior construction, except for the replacement of the building’s windows. The developer also plans to undertake a ​“full overhaul” of the building’s mechanicals.

“Our main goal is to have the building full.”

Do you plan on replacing the roof? asked City Engineer Giovanni Zinn.

“I don’t know if we’re going to replace it or rehab it,” Feldman replied. ​“We’ll have the contractor analyze and make a decision. It’s definitely going to be repaired.”

“I assume these are market-rate apartments?” Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand asked.

“Yes,” Feldman replied.

Before voting unanimously in support, the commissioners imposed two conditions of approval: that the developer separate the building’s stormwater sewer from its sanitary sewer, if those two aren’t already separated; and that the developer ​“undertake all reasonable efforts” to work with the city to put a bioswale in front of the property.

MOD’s site plan application states that the developer expects construction to start immediately and to be completed within one year.

MOD has also won approvals in recent years for a number of other residential conversions around the city, including at the former Church of the Redeemer in East Rock, at the former Harold’s bridal shop on Elm Street, and at the James English Building on Court Street.

Click here to read a story by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary about MOD’s presentation of this project this week to the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team.