Developer Buys Tandoor Building, Ex-Gas Station For $2.7M

By Mona Mahadevan, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — A Queens-based developer paid a combined $2.7 million to purchase the Tandoor Indian restaurant building, an adjacent surface parking lot, and a nearby shuttered gas station where 44 apartments have long been planned, but never built.

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Those downtown property transactions were recorded on the city’s land records database on April 17.

In two separate deals, a holding company called Noble on Chapel Street LLC purchased the ex-gas station at 49 Howe St. for $1.6 million and the current restaurant building at 1226 Chapel St. for $1.1 million. The 1226 Chapel property also includes a back parking lot. Those properties were last appraised by the city for tax purposes as worth $418,300 and $345,800, respectively.

Noble on Chapel Street LLC is controlled by Konstandinos Vorillas of Long Island City, New York. Vorillas runs a real estate development firm called First Elite Management, which also purchased a property on Blake Street for $2.9 million on March 6. Like the ex-gas station property on Howe, the Blake Street property — which currently has an office building and a surface parking lot — has long been slated to be turned into new apartments.

Vorillas did not respond to requests for comment about his plans for 49 Howe St. or 1226 Chapel St. Brad Balletto, a local real estate broker who represented Vorillas’ company in the transactions, declined to comment, saying he did not know why Vorillas purchased the Howe and Chapel properties.

The two parcels are a five-minute walk from where Yale plans to build a seven-story dramatic arts complex. They are also within walking distance of Yale’s main campus, a new bioscience tower, and a soon-to-open neuroscience center.

The 49 Howe St. property currently houses a closed gas station. In 2019, the property’s now-former owners, S&S Enterprises CT Inc., sought permission to replace the pumps with a six-story, 44-unit apartment complex. The landlord — a company controlled by Murad Charania — never followed through on the plan, leaving the station to sit unused.

Chris Mordecai of Farnam Realty represented S&S Enterprises in the transaction. He said the gas station owner never intended to build apartments themselves, but rather to sell the parcel with pre-approvals for a residential development.

Mordecai could not explain why Vorillas was willing to spend three times more than the appraised value of 49 Howe St. to buy the property.

Next door, at 1226 Chapel St., sits Tandoor, a diner-style Indian restaurant that offers a daily lunch buffet. Tandoor has served patrons for almost 30 years, according to Dave Singh, the restaurant’s owner.

Singh said he tried to purchase the property in 2023, but the owner — a holding company named Chapel 1226 LLC that is controlled by Paul Patel, Dennis Stanek Jr., and Kent Glowa — wanted more than what he felt the property was worth. (The 1226 Chapel property’s now-former owners did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.)

Singh said Vorillas has not shared his plans for 1226 Chapel St. While he has a four-year lease that expires in 2030, he does not know what comes next for Tandoor.

“I’m not worried,” Singh, 70, told the Independent. “If God wants me to stay, then I’ll stay.”

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.