Photocircuits
Site - Potential for
Development The owners of the
now-defunct Photocircuits plant in Glen Cove are
busy reassuring potential buyers and development
partners that the 25-acre site is almost clean
enough to host a residential or mixed-use project,
but state officials say the site is far too
contaminated for any such redevelopment. Next month, the
state Department of Environmental Conservation will
release a plan that could restrict the land's
future use and saddle someone with more than $9
million in cleanup costs. A DEC official said the
site "has to be fully cleaned up before they can do
anything on it." And officials from
the city and Nassau's economic development
department are pitching the site - where as many as
4,000 workers manufactured circuit boards for 56
years - to major commercial users. In short, the
parties involved in determining the future of the
storied site are working at cross-purposes, and no
one is ready to pick up the tab. DEC officials say
the site is heavily contaminated. In a draft
remediation plan, the agency calls for long-term
soil and groundwater testing, a site management
plan to involve continued evaluation, and - most
distressing to potential landowners - a restriction
that would require "limiting the use and
development of the property to
commercial/industrial." Glen Cove Mayor
Ralph Suozzi said that, contamination issues aside,
a zoning change to permit residential or mixed-use
development isn't in the cards. "Everyone wants
residential because it drives the most dollars, but
we're trying to create jobs in Glen Cove," he said,
adding one proposal under discussion could bring
1,000 jobs. And while acting
Photocircuits president Michael Nussbaum said that
all redevelopment options remain on the table, a
June 4 court filing by the company's lawyers says,
"It is reasonably expected that all remediation
efforts will continue in order to be able to
complete the redevelopment of that land into
residential use, since the real property as well as
the liability for environmental issues remain held
by GCP." GCP Llc is the
land-owning affiliate of Photocircuits' parent, San
Bernardino, Calif.-based American Pacific Financial
Corp., which bought Photocircuits out of bankruptcy
last year. At the time, the investor painted a rosy
picture of Photocircuits' future, but in March,
when the plant was shuttered, employees said the
new owners had not reinvested in the
company. This month,
Nussbaum objected to the DEC's findings. He said
there were two small contaminated areas - one a
step away from being certified as clean, the other
being remediated with an existing $400,000 fund.
But in May 2006, the DEC estimated cleanup costs at
more than $9 million, according to the filing.
Nussbaum said he had "no idea why the word
residential is in" the filing, that he was
"blindsided" by the DEC's remediation plan, and
that he had not heard about the $9-million
estimate. "There were no environmental issues in
the 50-year history of Photocircuits," he said.
"The whole environmental issue has never been an
issue."
From
Newsday 6/20/07