Middletown's Blue House, Focus of Quarrel, Changes Colors and Owner

The 1849 Greek revival Village District two-story home that garnered attention this past spring when an anonymous blog charged its seven-member LLC with flipping it for profit has sold to a Massachusetts man.

According to the Middletown town clerk's office records, 170 College Street, owned by the Blue House Group LLC, was purchased on June 10 by Stephen A. Revilak of Arlington, Mass., for $260,000.

The Blue House Group comprises Village District residents Scott Kessel, Rani Arbo, Catherine Johnson, Mary Alice Haddad, Lucy McMillan, Ed McKeon, Stephen Smith and Monica Belyea, according to city records.

The 3,380-square-foot home at the corner of Pearl and Washington streets, whose name was derived from its exterior color at the time of purchase, is now renovated and painted a seafoam green. Wesleyan University sold it to the limited liability partnership in May 2011 for $105,000.

In March, the Middletown Insider, an anonymous blog, accused education board secretary and Blue House member McKeon of having ulterior motives in opposing local developer Centerplan's proposal for a 10,000-square-foot drive-through retail-restaurant complex off busy Route 66.

The Insider post said McKeon and he and his partners owned a home in the development plan area and were trying to flip the residential property for profit and opposing the zone change for business reasons.

In March, McKeon told the Middletown Patch that information was incorrect and that 170 College Street is outside the proposed zone change area at the corner of High and Washington streets. 

In an email to the Middletown Insider, McKeon denounced the postings as malicious and inaccurate and threatened to sue the blog if it didn't remove them. The Insider, in turn, posted those emails to the blog. 

Tempers have cooled since then and little more has been made in the press about the Blue House Group.

Still, McKeon would like to correct the record. "We did sell it for a profit," McKeon says. "We purchased the house from Wesleyan to renovate it to have it owner-occupied."

However, he says, a good deal of "sweat equity" went into the renovation by all the members, which can't be quantified, and a property manager was hired.

As for flipping, or buying a rundown home with the sole intention of making upgrades in order to sell it for a big profit, McKeon takes issue with the charge.

He also resents he criticism that the Blue House Group "outbid the Connection" in May 2011, something else alluded to on the Insider blog. "Wesleyan had an offer on the house for much less," McKeon says, but chose to sell it to Blue House because of its intention to renovate it.

The couple who purchased 170 College Street, Revilak and Julie Rioux, who's from Middletown, have Rioux's sister living in one of the apartments and is renting out the other.

McKeon says he also takes offense at the suggestion that Blue House purchased 170 College Street for "political" reasons. "I'm not ashamed. Now we have a nice new neighbor."

At the time of the Middletown Insider post, "Through the Looking Glass an alternate view of Wednesday's P/Z Meeting Part 1," Arbo commented that the Blue House Group was unlikely to make money on the sale of the house, since renovations had been completed a year prior to mid-March and no offers had been made. She also insisted Blue House didn't buy 170 College Street to make money but to fix it up and sell it to someone who would enjoy living in downtown Middletown.

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