516 Elm St.: Now under new ownership.
A Bethany-based builder who has spent the past two decades rehabbing rundown local rental properties has purchased — and begun fixing up — a three-family house on Elm Street that has been vacant ever since an October 2024 fatal fire.
That small-scale developer, Ferdinand Escoffery, made the purchase just as he is finishing building four new apartments at the site of another fire-damaged house, on Colby Court in Upper Westville.
“OK, I need my next project,” he recalled thinking in a recent interview with the Independent.
That next project will be 516 Elm St. — where 32-year-old Kenneth Mims died by suicide in a fire in October 2024, and where Escoffery now plans to gut-rehab and restore three apartments.
According to the city’s land records database, Escoffery’s company National Construction LLC purchased 516 Elm St. on May 22 for $240,000. The property’s previous owner was 56-58 Avon Street LLP, a company controlled by the oft-cited landlord Jianchao “JC” Xu, also of Bethany.
The three-family house last sold for $109,900 in 2009, and the city last appraised it for tax purposes as worth $300,000. City land records also show that Escoffery’s company received a $392,000 mortgage loan for 516 Elm St. on May 22 from Pinnacle Financial Services 1 LLC.
Escoffery, 49, said that he has spent the past two decades rehabbing dilapidated homes across New Haven. He estimated he’s restored or newly built more than 30 units of housing all across the city — from Hallock Avenue to Winchester Avenue to Dixwell Avenue to Colby Court.
Born and raised in Jamaica, Escoffery trained as a furniture maker and carpenter. (“I used to love making French windows and doors,” he said.)
He said he moved to New Haven roughly 25 years ago and worked for different contractors, including JT Construction, before starting his own business in 2003.
Escoffery lived on Munson Street in New Haven up until 2010, when he said a stray bullet was shot into his home and “grazed” his stepdaughter. As much as he loves New Haven, he decided he needed to move his family out of town. He now lives in Bethany — while still working in New Haven.
Escoffery said he had been in talks with Xu for a while about rehabbing 516 Elm St. “Finally, we closed the deal,” he said. “My plan for the building is to fully renovate it, bring it down to the studs, get rid of all the fire damage.”
Escoffery said he’s done exactly this type of work before — most recently at 452 Dixwell Ave., a two-family house that was wrecked by a fire in July 2024. Working for the property’s owner, Escoffery renovated that building, which is now open and occupied again.
Escoffery said he hopes to have 516 Elm St. rehabbed in the next four months or so. He’s already pulled an exploratory building permit and his team has begun cleaning out and gutting the property.
“My first goal is to always finish the outside,” he added, so that the exterior of the building “looks nice [and is] not an eyesore in the community.” Then he’ll do all the interior work needed to make this building livable again.
Escofferry said he plans to paint the finished building blue and white, “my signature color” scheme. “I used to do green and white,” he said, until those colors got too popular with other builders.
Meanwhile, at 15 Colby Ct. on Wednesday, Escoffery gave this reporter a tour of the four new four-bedroom apartments he’s almost done building at the site of that long-vacant, fire-damaged property.
He and some of his crewmembers were working Wednesday on installing bathroom mirrors and handrails. He’s still waiting for the water and gas to be turned on before finishing the driveways. Escoffery said he hopes to have the units occupied as soon as this July.
He’s also posted “For Sale” signs around the property as he looks for a buyer to take over the finished product, though he’s not averse to holding onto the building and renting it out himself. Escoffery said the property’s three new four-bedroom apartments will likely rent for around $3,000 apiece; he has to check with the city as to how much the fourth unit, an affordable “Inclusionary Zoning” unit, needs to rent for.
Escoffery said that he prides himself on just how comprehensive his gut-rehab housework is. Some buyers of dilapidated properties, “they slap it together,” put up some paint and put the apartment back on the market. As he toured 15 Colby Ct. Escoffery talked about putting in stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops, and washing machines and dryers in each unit.
This is no “scrape and paint” job, he said. And he doesn’t plan on 516 Elm being just a “scrape and paint,” either.
Local attorney Ben Trachten — who has worked with Escoffery on a number of local housing projects, property purchases, and zoning-relief applications — praised the developer/contractor for following through on project after project.
“He’s so local. He knows everybody,” Trachten said about Escoffery. “He gets shit done, he does what he says he’s gonna do, and he’s taking these projects that nobody else wants. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood it is, he produces a good product. He’s a hard worker.”
Trachten continued, “It’s just great to see these properties get into his hands, where you know something is going to happen.”
Escoffery’s most recent building project: Four new apartments at 15 Colby Ct.
Inside one of those new four-bedroom apartments.
This reporter, spotted in one of 15 Colby’s new bathroom mirrors.
516 Elm St.
Escoffery’s team at work on Wednesday.
Escoffery at 15 Colby Ct. on Wednesday.
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