🔒Pennies From Heaven: As church properties increasingly close, commercial developers see new opportunities

As church attendance declines, in part due to coronavirus shutdowns and more prominently due to the long-term secularization of American society, houses of worship throughout Greater New Haven and across the United States are being repurposed for non-religious uses.

The surge in availability of formerly religious buildings — churches, parochial schools, convents, etc. — poses a host of new opportunities for commercial development of significant properties. But it also poses challenges for communities struggling to maintain the character of historic neighborhoods that for decades or even centuries were centers of both spiritual and civic life and now are being transformed for new and often commercial uses.

The trend also poses challenges for zoning officials — who want to exercise caution and avoid adversely affecting the character and property values of those neighborhoods.

Few communities have houses of worship at the center — literally — of their civic identity as New Haven. The three churches on the Green are emblematic of the city’s founding in 1638 as a beacon of Puritan faith and virtue in the New World. However, even these magnificent structures — the Congregationalist Center and United churches, as well as the Anglican Trinity Church — have experienced long-term declines in attendance as many families that worshiped there for generations have decamped to the suburbs or simply stopped attending church.

The most dramatic transformation involves Catholic churches, schools and other properties, many of which reflect the city’s rich history of Italian immigration. The Archdiocese of Hartford effected a major restructuring three years ago, paring the number of Roman Catholic parishes in the state from 212 to 127. The new number included 59 newly merged parishes, but another 26 churches were left dark — available for weddings and funerals but not regular Masses.

“It’s a lack of attendance and an insufficient number of priests to man all these parishes,” explains David C. Melillo of H. Pearce Commercial in North Haven, who, with his partner John Bergin, has brokered many transactions for the Archdiocese in recent years. “What they’ve done is consolidate them and sell off the excess [properties]. Most of them have been older buildings that are more expensive to maintain and operate.”

Melillo reports that over the last three years Pearce has sold 22 properties — churches, schools, convents, rectories — in New Haven, Hamden, Cheshire, East Haven and Meriden. All were sold to other religious or educational users.

The reason?

Melillo, explains, “There are deed restrictions in [many of] these sales for the first five years that limit the use to office, residential, religious or educational uses.”

Many of the deals Melillo and Bergin have brokered have been sales of former Catholic church properties to other churches.

“Most are other denominational churches,” Melillo explains. “We’ve sold a couple to various Baptist churches, another to a Pentecostal church. We sold one in Meriden to a Korean church. They’re pretty much all ethnic churches.”

That’s a trend that reflects the shifting demographics of the nation and Connecticut. Around the turn of the 20th century, most Catholic churches in Connecticut cities were houses of worship for Irish, and later Italian, parishes.

“These were primarily all ethnic churches when they started out,” Melillo points out.

In the 21st century, “it’s basically reversed course now. They’re still mainly immigrant ethnic churches, but it’s evolved into different ethnicities — from western Europe to now eastern Europe and Asia and Central and South America. It’s really just the change in the demographics,” he adds.

Finding a new purpose

Paul Connery is director of property and assets for the Archdiocese of Hartford, which governs Catholic parishes throughout Connecticut. Connery assisted in the sale of St. Brendan’s Church in New Haven’s Westville neighborhood and St. Paul’s in West Haven, which was acquired by the University of New Haven two years ago.

The former Catholic churches are owned not by the Archdiocese, but by individual parishes. Connery serves as a consultant to those parishes in disposing of their properties. Most but not all sales are to other churches.

“We’ve sold schools to other schools, and sold rectories to residential [developers] and convents to apartment developers,” Connery explains.

Among the most intriguing properties to go on the market recently is the Monastery of the Glorious Cross, at 61 Burban Drive in Branford. The property, located in the Branford Hills neighborhood, is the original home of Connecticut Hospice but in recent years served as a semi-cloistered community of Benedictine nuns. It includes 45,262 square feet of space on 5.99 acres. It originally went on the market two years ago for $2.49 million. The property is being sold to GR Realty Associates, a Branford holding company whose principal is Lisa Amato.

Lou Proto, principal of the Proto Group in North Haven, had the listing. Proto has brokered the sale of many former Catholic churches, including the former convent, grade school and nursery school owned by St. Michael’s Church in Wooster Square in 2019. It was a significant sale in part because “I went to nursery school there,” recalls Proto.

St. Michael’s sold off the trio of properties at 234, 240 and 250 Greene St. for $1.2 million in April 2019 to GR Realty Associates, which converted the buildings into high-end apartments.

More recently Proto, who like Melillo does a significant amount of work for the Archdiocese of Hartford, is brokering the sale of St. Rose’s Church on Blatchley Avenue in New Haven to another residential developer, and also Holy Cross school and convent in New Britain.

Among the largest church properties to be dealt recently is St. Brendan’s on Whalley Avenue in New Haven. The principal property, including the school and rectory, was sold three years ago for $1.5 million to Yeshivas Beis Dovid Shlomo, a Chabad rabbinic school located for decades at 292 Norton St. Connery cites this as an excellent example of “repurposing” a former Catholic Church property.

In addition, the St. Aedan/St. Brendan convent at 349 McKinley Ave. in New Haven is slated to be sold to Capital Partners, which last October was granted zoning relief to convert what was once 20 living units for nuns into nine condos.

New apartments

Among the most significant recent church transactions involved not a Catholic Church, but the Church of the Redeemer on Whitney Avenue in New Haven. The United Church of Christ is among the most progressive Protestant denominations in the Northeast; its ever-more secular membership has been in long-term decline.

Two years ago the church’s congregation decided to merge with Spring Glen Church in Hamden and sell the historic Federal-style building.

Pearce’s Melillo brokered the sale to MOD Equities, whose principals — Jacob and Josef Feldman — are converting the property into 24 market-rate apartments.

“[The congregation] couldn’t maintain and support the property any more, so they decided to put it on the market,” Melillo explains. Both the congregation and the neighborhood had “a lot of emotional attachment to the property — a beautiful building, beautiful sanctuary. They were very accommodating to social agencies and [nonprofit] groups, allowing them to use the building; and they wanted the future use to be something they could be proud of.”

There were multiple bidders for the Whitney Avenue property, most of whom eyed conversion to residential use in what had become the city’s more desirable — and expensive — neighborhood.

“One of the things that made the seller happy is that [MOD Equities] pledged to preserve the exterior of the building. It’s a good fit for the neighborhood,” Melillo said.

Though the trend of church closings will doubtless continue, many involved in the sale of former religious properties express regret at seeing them retired from their original spiritual mission.

“It’s kind of a sad thing to see these magnificent buildings [repurposed],” says Melillo. “These parishioners had a deep-seeded attachment to the properties over generations — from first communions to marriages to funerals. And closing [many of] these was not easy for the parishes.”