Property Sales Roundup: Ocean Acquires 70 Apts. For $9.2M In Latest Westville Expansion

Thomas Breen photo

311 Blake St., now owned by an affiliate of Ocean Management.

A local megalandlord expanded its domain in Westville/Beaver Bills by buying up a 70-unit apartment complex on Blake Street for $9.2 million.

That was among the city’s latest property sales, according to New Haven’s land records database. (See below for a full roundup of recent transactions.)

On Dec., 23, Blake Development LLC — an affiliate of Shmuel Aizenberg’s Ocean Management — bought the four-building, 70-unit apartment complex at 311 Blake St. for $9.2 million from a holding company controlled by Roger Simon of Bethany.

The city last appraised the 3.47-acre property as worth $5,956,700.

Thomas Breen file photo

Ocean-hired project manager Melissa Saint (right).

Ocean-hired project manager Melissa Saint said that Ocean has great plans” for this newly acquired 70-unit apartment complex.

The 5 buildings are strong in structure but require exterior and interior upgrades such as new front stoops, front entry doors, railings and roofs,” she told the Independent by email. She said some of the renovation plans include replacing all of the apartments’ windows to thermal pane windows, adding air conditioning to each unit, and adding washers and dryers to each unit. 

Ocean feels this will be a great improvement to the complex and make the existing tenants and future tenants enjoy a more modern rental unit,” she said.

The purchase marks Ocean’s latest significant expansion in that very stretch of Westville/Beaver Ills.

The local megalandlord is already in the process of building 129 new market-rate apartments at the site of the former 500 Blake Street Cafe.

In November, affiliates of Ocean spent a total of $740,000 buying a four-family house at 220 Fitch St., a single-family house at 210 Fitch St., a single-family house at 202 Fitch St., and vacant land at 216 Fitch St. — all of which are right next door to the newly acquired 311 Blake St. property. (The Independent first reported on those Fitch Street sales in this previous property-sale roundup article.)

And Ocean-affiliates already own the adjacent residential properties at 166, 168, 170, 172, and 174 Fitch.

Roundup: J. Press, Penn Real Estate, Mandy

260 Elm St., now owned by J. Press.

In other property transactions:

• On Dec. 1, a New Jersey-based investor duo bought the Whitney Modern” luxury apartments at 703 Whitney Ave. for $18.5 million. Click here for a full article about that transaction.

• On Dec. 20, the Middlefield-based Lyman Farm company bought the former Something Sweet industrial bakery buildings at 724 Grand Ave., 106 Food Terminal Plaza, and 108 Food Terminal Plaza for $3 million, and plans on moving its wholesale pie-baking business to New Haven. Click here for a full article about that transaction.

• On Dec. 23, the local high-end men’s clothier J. Press purchased the retail-office building at 260 Elm St., which formerly housed Tyco, for $2.6 million. The city last appraised that property as worth $1,652,700. Signs posted in the Elm Street building’s front windows indicate that J. Press will be moving into that newly acquired location this summer.

• On Jan. 13, a holding company controlled by MOD Equities’ Jacob and Josef Feldman sold the three-family house at 248 Nicoll St. and the six-unit apartment house at 258 Nicoll St. to holding companies controlled by Francis Greenburger and Robert Kantor for a combined sum of $2,180,000. MOD purchased those buildings in 2013 for $780,000, and the city last appraised them as worth a combined total of $1,170,000.

• On Dec. 27, a holding company controlled by Alexander Clark purchased the five-unit retail-and-apartment building at 962 Chapel St. for $2.8 million from George Zdru. That property last sold for $195,000 in 1995, and the city last appraised it as worth $1,531,400.

• On Dec. 29, a holding company controlled by Sean McCloskey of the Philadelphia-based Penn Real Estate Group purchased the mixed-use building at 1204 Chapel St. and the nearby vacant properties at 387 and 391 Crown St. from Ronald Delfini for a total of $2,050,000. The city last appraised those three properties as worth a combined total of $878,900. The sale comes roughly two years after McCloskey’s company spent $4.7 million buying up the western half of the adjacent Park Street block.

• Affiliates of the local megalandlord Mandy Management recently spent another $1,049,000 buying four rental properties containing 12 different apartments. Those include the three-family house at 64 Stanley St., the three-family house at 276 Greenwich Ave., the four-family house at 310 West Division St., and the two-family house at 499 Winthrop Ave. While two of those properties were bought by familiar Mandy-affiliate LLCs called Gur New Haven III LLC and Altshuler Investments DE LLC, the other two were bought by a newly formed Mandy affiliate with the cringeworthy name Climax-New Haven LLC.”

See below for a full list of recent local property sales.

Tags:

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy