A New York developer who paid $770,000 for a historic, 27,548-square-foot Manchester commercial building late last year has turned around and sold it for $1.35 million after securing land-use approvals for its conversion to apartments.
Attorney and developer Gianni “John” Mariolis acquired the 138-year-old “Apel’s Opera House” building at 35 Oakland St. last December. Mariolis and his family have pursued multiple commercial-to-residential conversions in Waterbury and other central Connecticut communities in recent years.
Mariolis sought and received local land-use approvals allowing for the conversion of the building into 22 one-bedroom and four, two-bedroom apartments.
In a deed recorded Sept. 2, a limited liability company controlled by Mariolis sold the property to an LLC headed by apartment investor Moshe Grossbard, who lists a Monsey, New York address in state business records.
The $1.35 million sale price represents a $580,000, or roughly 75%, increase from what Mariolis paid about nine months earlier.
Grossbard plans to move forward with the redevelopment of the Apel building, according to Natalie Zoef, director of sales for real estate services and investment firm Northeast Private Client Group.
Zoef represented the seller. Vanguard Vice President Andrew Stein represented the buyer.
Manchester Oaks LLC, the company Grossbard used for the acquisition, secured a $4 million mortgage from Manhattan-based Mansby Capital on the property.
The five-story, brick-sided building in Manchester’s North End was built by German immigrant and entrepreneur Bernard C. Apel in 1888 for his furniture and undertaking businesses, according to a history published by Susan Barlow, of the Manchester Historical Society. It became best known for the 1,000-person-capacity opera house that occupied its upper floors.
Apel’s Opera House hosted traveling theatrical companies, dances, church gatherings, school events and other entertainment, according to Barlow. It was also the site of Manchester’s first recorded movie showing, during a church benefit in 1899, she wrote.
A major fire gutted the building in April 1899, but Apel rebuilt and the opera house resumed hosting community events.
The building later went through a succession of owners and uses, including as a tobacco warehouse, farm equipment store and furniture store and, beginning in the 1970s, as a hub for the Central Connecticut Co-Op Farmers Association.
