🔒My old school: Wooster Sq. sale brings pennies from Heaven

If you’re a commercial real-estate broker, closing on a hard-won deal is always something to celebrate. But selling the former convent, grade school and nursery school owned by St. Michael’s Church in Wooster Square was especially meaningful for Lou Proto, principal of North Haven’s Proto Group.

“I went to nursery school there,” says Proto, who recalls playing on the rooftop playground as a young boy.

St. Michael’s sold off the trio of properties at 234, 240 and 250 Greene St. for $1.2 million in April to GR Realty Associates LLC, a Branford holding company that plans to convert the buildings into high-end apartments.

The successful deal was a welcome Easter blessing for the struggling parish, but it wasn’t an easy sale: Two earlier attempts to sell the properties collapsed amid public zoning tangles and neighborhood opposition to previous developers’ plans.

"It was very emotional for me," says Proto of the transaction. "It was important for me to make sure that [St. Michael's] could get as much as they could for the property."

Once a haven for hundreds of new Italian immigrants, the historic church, like many houses of worship, especially in urban areas, had fallen on hard times in recent years. And fewer parishioners in the pews meant fewer envelopes in the collection plate.

The long-shuttered buildings (which are on the city tax rolls, although the church itself is tax-exempt) were another financial drain on the parish, not to mention a magnet for vandals. Selling them quickly — and fetching a good price — was crucial to shoring up the church’s ailing coffers, Proto explains.

"My family has a long history in Wooster Square, so for me to do this for the parish was a personal goal," he says.

Proto, who represented both the church and GR Realty owner Lisa Amato wasn’t the first to list the properties. The parish had initially worked with another broker and came close to a sale in 2014. But a deal with New York developer Mod Equities fell apart after their proposal failed to secure the needed zoning approvals to convert the buildings to apartments.

Proto secured the listing in 2018 and placed it on the market that May for $1.5 million. He says he had “five or six” offers, but all were contingent on the city greenlighting a zoning change.

He eventually found a developer willing to buy the properties at a reduced price — without the zoning contingency. But by late fall it became clear that deal was unraveling, too, amid more neighborhood backlash over parking and skepticism about the developer’s intentions for the property.

In December, the buyer pulled out of the contract, citing the discovery of asbestos and underground oil tanks that needed remediation, says Proto. That’s when Amato entered the picture.

“She approached me right after Christmas,” recalls Proto. “She said, ‘Listen, we’re prepared to take some risk. If the church subdivides the properties we will take the risk of going to zoning and getting the zoning on our own.

"And that's exactly what happened."

(Proto also represented Amato in her $900,000 purchase this April of the former St. Elizabeth’s Church on Burban Drive in Branford, where she is planning to put up single-family houses.)

Paul Connery, director of property and assets for the Archdiocese of Hartford, which includes New Haven County, has overseen the sale of some two dozen former Catholic church properties since 2017, most of them hitting the market when the archdiocese consolidated its 212 parishes into 127 in 2017.

He says finding a buyer can be challenging since churches tend to be located in residential neighborhoods and their properties’ uses restricted by zoning regulations.

"Most of the time the buyers have been other churches," Connery explains. 

Still, the archdiocese has successfully sold $12 million worth of shuttered church properties since 2017, including nine former assets in greater New Haven, he says, with proceeds going to the selling parishes.

Amato did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story, but is planning to convert the Wooster Square properties into 23 one- and two-bedroom luxury apartments. Amato and her son and business partner Michael Massimino submitted a site plan for the project to New Haven's City Plan Commission on July 18. 

Proto says Amato has “done a substantial amount of homework” to come up with a plan that will satisfy neighbors and city officials.

“She has the vision in mind to keep the integrity of the buildings in the neighborhood, the architecture is the same, and they’re going to create high-end apartments for luxury living,” he says. 

NH County home sales decline in June

New Haven-Middlesex Realtors released its monthly report on residential sales for June 2019.

Provided by SmartMLS, a shared residential listing service for Connecticut real estate professionals, the report shows that 819 single-family homes were sold last month in New Haven County, down 13.4 percent from the 946 closed sales in June 2018.

Sales of townhouse/condo units likewise declined from a year ago: from 287 in 2018 to 244, a decline of 15 percent.

Year-to-date figures show a smaller year-over-year change. For the first six months of 2019, 3,521 single-family homes sold in New Haven County, down 3.5 percent from the same period in 2018. For townhouse and condo units, the 2019 figure was 1,088, down 2.9 percent from the 1,121 units sold during the first six months of 2018.

But even as sales volume declined, prices are creeping skyward. Median single-family home sales prices rose 2.7 percent over a year ago to $306,695. For the same period, townhouse/condo sales prices decreased slightly (1 percent), from a 2018 median of $157,500 to $156,000 in June of this year.