LOCKPORT
Franbilt plant bought by lone bidder at auction
LOCKPORT— A Cheektowaga businessman bought the vacant Franbilt metal fabricating plant at a foreclosure auction here Wednesday, while a Canadian businessman made him a lease offer.
Brian Schectman, president of Industrial Realty and Funding, bid $925,000. It was the only bid made after Scott Robbins, special assets manager of First Niagara Bank, set the minimum at $899,000.
“I didn’t think I was going to own it, but I do,” Schectman said. “I thought there were other bidders here that were going to bid it up.”
One of those was Brian D. Mitchell, president of Pop & Lock Corp., the Welland, Ont., auto parts maker and defense contractor who has been seeking a U. S. plant since last year.
Mitchell handed Schectman a letter offering to lease the 45,000- square-foot Akron Road plant from him, and Schectman said he’d reply by Tuesday.
Mitchell, whose company has a contract to make triggers for shoulder- fired missiles used by U. S. soldiers in Iraq, said he has come under pressure from the missile assembler, Tallie Aerospace of Mesa, Ariz., to start making the parts in the United States.
However, his efforts have come to nought. At first, he thought he had a deal for a vacant plant in Wheatfield, even obtaining a tax break from the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency, but that purchase fell through.
His interest in the Franbilt plant, vacated after the company went bankrupt, was stymied by the bank’s foreclosure plans, and he was rebuffed in an effort to acquire the vacant former Sherwood Selpac plant on Church Street in Lockport.
In April, Mitchell was flown to Marietta, Ga., by officials from that state, to look at a vacant aircraft plant, but he said Wednesday his company’s 45 jobs weren’t enough for economic development officials there. They steered him to another vacant factory in Evansville, Ga., which he said he is still considering.
Also, South Carolina has gotten into the act, pitching a vacant plant in Bennettsville. But Mitchell said all along he’d rather move his company to Niagara County.
“[Franbilt] was our primary site, but it’s not off the table,” he said.
Mitchell said he hired a Niagara Falls company to appraise the property, and when the appraisers came back with photos of mystery drums with unknown contents behind the plant, he lost interest in buying it himself.
Schectman said he didn’t know about the drums, but he didn’t seem worried, saying he will pay to have them removed.
“They’ll be disposed of as they should be. I’ll call the [state Department of Environmental Conservation] and find out what’s in them,” Schectman said.
Meanwhile, First Niagara, which was owed almost $1.4 million when it foreclosed on the mortgage, lost almost $500,000 on the deal.
“In this transaction, we came up short,” Robbins admitted.
