The newly purchased Elks Club home at 329 Dixwell Ave.
The Elks Club has found a new Dixwell home, after purchasing a single-story church building on Dixwell Avenue near Munson Street for $180,000.
The purchase among of the city’s most recent property transactions. (See the full list of transactions lower down in this story.)
According to the city land records database, on Oct. 15, the Elks Club — officially known as East Rock Lodge, No. 141, I.B.P.O.E. of W., Incorporated — purchased the church building at 329 Dixwell Ave. from Freedom Temple Holiness Church Inc. for $180,000.
The purchase comes roughly two years after the Elks Club sold their long-time home at 87 Webster St. for $900,000 to ConnCORP as part of that local redevelopment agency’s plans to build up Dixwell Plaza. It also comes several months after the historic African American institution won the support of the City Plan Commission in its bid to purchase vacant city-owned land at 71 and 75 County St.
Thomas Breen file photo
Elks leader Gary Hogan.
“One of the things we wanted to do was remain in the Dixwell area, on Dixwell Avenue,” Elks Exalted Ruler Gary Hogan told the Independent in a recent phone interview about the property transaction. Dixwell “has been our home community for quite some time.”
Hogan said that the Elks Club has spent the better part of the last two years working with the city to try to find a new home. While ironing out the details for the potential County Street land purchase, Hogan said, Freedom Temple Holiness Church Pastor Dorothy Mewborn came forward with an offer to sell the 329 Dixwell Ave. building — and the Elks Club wound up buying. So now the Country Street deal is off the table as the Elks plan their move to Dixwell.
“The idea is to do this in phases,” Hogan said about what comes next. “First, to open our facility for our meetings and some community events.”
Then, the Elks Club hopes to build out a new community space, commercial kitchen, and meeting rooms at the 329 Dixwell Ave. site.
The city-owned vacant lot next door at 325 Dixwell.
“We’re in the design phase now,” he said. He said the Elks Club will ultimately have to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals before it can begin construction on any of these plans.
And he said the Elks Club is in negotiations with the city to use the adjacent vacant city-owned land at 325 Dixwell Ave. for parking.
“We’re all very excited about this,” he said. “Through this process, we’re really looking forward to getting our programs up and running for the Dixwell community.” Those programs will include “our youth team, our civil liberties team, mentoring,” jazz nights, and other community-focused events, such as food and clothing giveaways.
He said the Elks plan on building out an “energy-efficient” and “sound-proofed” building to make sure they are “a good neighbor” at their new Dixwell Avenue home.
Mandy Expands By $3.5M; Flippers Keep Flipping
The former St. Rose School on Richard Street, now owned by an affiliate of Mandy Management.
In other recent local property transactions:
• Affiliates of the local megalandlord Mandy Management spent another $3,562,500 buying 11 properties containing 26 apartments. Mandy’s latest residential purchases include 208 Wooster St., 75 Weybosset St., 323 Ellsworth Ave., 252 Huntington St., 42 Foxon St., 34 Ellsworth Ave., 619 Winthrop Ave., 148 Plymouth St., and 1 Valley Pl. North.
As part of that latest spate of recent property pick-ups, an affiliate of Mandy Management called Fair Haven Heights Properties LLC purchased an ex-convent at 81 Saltonstall Ave. and a former Catholic school building at 22 Richard St. from St. Rose Church for a total of $445,000. The Mandy affiliate recently won permission from the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals to convert those former Fair Haven church buildings into 18 new apartments.
• Middlemen investors lined their pockets after buying and flipping six different properties at significant mark-ups. Those flipped properties include 1 Valley Pl. North, a two-family house that Muhammad Ali Chaudry bought for $161,000 on Sept. 9 and then flipped for $180,000 on Nov. 10; 128 Plymouth St., a three-family house that 50 Fitch LLC’s Mendy Paris and Sim Levehartz bought for $300,000 on Sept. 27 and flipped for $340,000 on Oct. 19; 248 West Hazel St., a three-family house that EP Home Buyers LLC’s Mendy Paris and Shneor Edelkopf bought for $315,000 on Oct. 15 and flipped for $355,000 on Oct. 25; 273 West Hazel St., a three-family house that EP Home Buyers LLC bought for $350,000 on Oct. 18 and flipped for $365,000 on Oct. 19; 377 Peck St., a two-family house that SZE Realty LLC’s Shneor Edelkopf bought for $240,000 on Oct. 28 and flipped for $280,000 on Oct. 1; and 7 Wolcott St., a two-family house that EP Home Buyers LLC bought for $218,000 on Oct. 28 and flipped for $258,000 on Nov. 1.
See the charts below for a full list of recent property transactions.
Congratulations to the Elks for finding a new home. I hope everything goes through as planned. The Elks Club can be a wonderful contributor to the neighborhoods stability and community resources, with youth programming and social events and charity works.