Young developer launches with 22-unit apartment conversion in Waterbury
Michael Puffer
Developer John Mariolis at 59 Field St., a Waterbury office building he is converting into apartments.
After years of helping his family with developments in New York and Connecticut, John Mariolis is advancing his first independent real estate investment with the conversion of a downtown Waterbury office building into 22 apartments.
Over the past four years, Mariolis, 27, and his Long Island-based family have purchased several buildings in and around downtown Waterbury, usually with an eye for conversion into apartments.
In a sale recorded last August, a limited liability company controlled by John Mariolis paid $305,000 for a three-story, 13,716-square-foot office-over-retail building at 59 Field St., in downtown Waterbury. He is weeks away from completing the conversion of the building into 10 studio apartments and 12 one-bedroom apartments.
Mariolis said he is close to closing the purchase of two dormant mill buildings in Manchester, which he plans to convert into apartments.
A practicing real estate attorney in New York, Mariolis plans to continue developing a mix of independent projects and others with his family moving forward.
“I’m young. I’m ambitious,” Mariolis said during a recent tour of his Field Street building. “I’ll buy as much as I can here in Connecticut and maybe at some point, when I’m a little older and more experienced, I’ll branch out into other states too.”
Mariolis declined to detail the redevelopment cost of his 1918-vintage building on Field Street. Records show he took a $770,500 mortgage with NY Tower Capital for the project.
The Mariolis family – headed by patriarch Ioannis Mariolis – was attracted to downtown Waterbury, a place where they could find bargains on handsome, antique buildings in a downtown with untapped potential. They also found a city administration eager to work with them to get dormant buildings back into productive use.
“It was partly a risk, but the architecture was there, and we could see the potential with the right investment,” John Mariolis said. “You are not going to charge $4,000 a month like they do in Queens, but I think with quality product, there is a reasonable level.”
The apartments at 61 Field St. range in size from about 350 to 550 square feet, with rents ranging from $1,100 to $1,525 monthly, Mariolis said.
John Mariolis has not yet renovated the first floor. It still has stacks of law books from its last occupant. Mariolis said he is contemplating transforming it into an additional six apartments, if the city permits.
The Mariolis family is expected to shortly purchase a 23,000-square-foot, office-and-retail building owned by the city at 20-30 Bank St., in the heart of the downtown.
The city acquired the building – known as the Exchange Courtyard – along with a neighboring 62,690-square-foot commercial building at 21 West Main St., for $4.47 million in December 2023. At the time, the buildings were mostly vacant and suffering from neglect.
City officials aimed to preserve the buildings and guide them back into activity.
Mariolis said he has found Manchester officials to be similarly receptive to redevelopment, and Connecticut eager, in general, to support housing development. That means less red tape and bureaucratic delay, he said.
“Connecticut needs a lot of housing, so the towns are very helpful in getting you to your goal of converting,” Mariolis said.
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