Peter de Bretteville looks at the former Lehman Brothers printing press and envisions a quiet space for retirees to make their homes.
One year after a legendary printing company at 191 Foster St. closed its doors, de Bretteville (pictured), a Yale architecture professor, is moving forward with a plan to transform the East Rock factory into luxury condos.
“It’s a very beautiful building,” he said, standing outside one portion of the factory. He praised its “robust concrete frame,” laid bare after cold weather stripped leaves from the vines that cover the building.
The factory has been in the hands of U.S. Bankruptcy Court since Dec. 9, 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed into Chapter 7 bankruptcy after printing high-end stationery for a hundred years.
De Bretteville is not the first one to envision a new future for the shuttered factory, but he’s made the most progress.
In a brief filed Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the trustee who’s handling the estate named de Bretteville as the preferred buyer for the site. The architect emerged as the most suitable among “several” people interested in buying and revamping the factory, said U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee Richard Coan, who just took over the Lehman Brothers case from attorney Michael Daly.
Coan proposed selling the factory to de Bretteville for $575,000. Click here, here and here to read Coan’s proposal.
The deal would include 191, 197 and 199 Foster, which comprise three factory buildings, a sliver of vacant land, and a run-down, single-family home. The properties are assessed at $590,380, without taking into account cleanup costs, according to land records.
The sale is far from final: The offer must first be approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy judge, who’s set to consider it on Dec. 3. And de Bretteville would still have to beat other bidders at a public auction.
De Bretteville, who’s 68, said he has had his eye on the factory since he and his wife, Sheila, moved to New Haven in 1990. They live not far away, just over the town line in Hamden.
The location’s perfect, he noted: close to the highway, to East Rock Park, to Romeo & Giuseppe’s market — and to a new Middle Eastern market on Orange Street, where he and his wife were spotted sampling homemade yogurt one summer afternoon. Sheila even did business with Lehman Brothers through the course of her work as a graphic designer. While he was saddened to see “the finest printing company in the area” close its doors, Peter de Bretteville also saw an opportunity.
De Bretteville set up a company called East Rock Partners LLC and started looking into buying the site. In his architectural work, de Bretteville has designed libraries, campus buildings and private homes. This would be his first time acting as a developer.
He said he’s been watching how empty-nesters and retirees move back into the city snatching up downtown condos. The East Rock condos would share that allure, but would come without the parking troubles and noise complaints, he reasoned. And there would be room for each condo to have its own spot of greenery, too.
The architect plans to build 14 condos, each with its own garden area, each facing into a courtyard.
The architect said he’d keep the narrow, two-story building that runs East to West on the site, with a small facade on Foster. He’d propose bumping up the roof to three stories to accommodate three-bedroom condos.
He would knock down the central building of the complex, a large warehouse, where workers once bent over lithographs and engraving machines. (In photo: a work station on the shop floor a few weeks after the factory closed.)
On the grave of that warehouse, he aims to build another six condos.
Industrial Remains
The property sits in what was once an industrial sector of East Rock. Nearby, the former Marlin Firearms building has been remade as an office building. Revamping the printing plant would require a zoning change from light-industrial to residential.
It would likely also require a significant amount of environmental cleanup.
How much?
That’s the million-dollar question for de Bretteville and other prospective buyers.
“There is a strong suspicion, and not a great deal of evidence yet, that the site is in need of a cleanup,” said de Bretteville. He noted two red flags: heavy machinery and photographic work.
If the judge gives him the green light to move forward, de Brettevile plans to find an answer to that question within the next couple months.
According to the proposed agreement, de Bretteville would put down $200,000 to hold the site while he hires an environmental investigators to figure out how polluted it is.
The proposal is called a Stalking Horse Agreement. It identifies de Bretteville as the “Stalking Horse Bidder,” whom the trustee has chosen to work with, and lays out terms of a deal to sell the property.
The proposed deal involves opt-outs for both parties, depending on how much pollution there turns out to be. If the cost of the cleanup if it exceeds $100,000, the estate would knock down the sale price.
The agreement also lays out guidelines for how the property will be sold. Even if the judge approves de Bretteville as the preferred buyer, he would still have to enter a competitive bidding match in a public auction. He’d have to share his environmental report with the other bidders, according to Coan, the trustee.
Bids at the public auction, whose date is yet to be determined, would start at $615,000. The auction would intentionally give de Bretteville a small advantage because of the risk he’s taking in doing the environmental study, Coan said.
Still Waiting
As the sale works its way through court, the 20 workers who lost jobs when the factory closed a year ago are still waiting for their money. The 17 non-managerial workers have filed claims in New Haven’s federal bankruptcy court seeking $180,000 in unpaid benefits. The figure includes vacation pay, 10 weeks’ severance pay as well as their final paycheck.
Workers won’t see any of that money until the bankruptcy case is completed, Coan said. Meanwhile, the workers are piecing together new lives. Some top managerial staff relocated to a West Haven printing business called GHP. That business also bought the Lehman Brothers name, website, phone numbers, work in progress, paper and etched copper plates, and $50,000 of equipment.
Lower-level workers, some of whom spent their lives learning a highly specialized trade that is becoming outdated, have had worse luck.
“I am still looking for work,” said Pat Helke, who worked in the office at Lehman Brothers for 35 years. “I know several other employees who are having similar bad luck in finding a job.”
Helke said former workers have been “hopeful that some payout from this sale would tide us over.” However, the workers are among dozens making claims to the estate. When it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004, Lehman Brothers owed over 50 vendors a total debt of between $1 million and $10 million, according to court records.
Judging by the sale price and the heaps of debt, “I am highly doubtful that this will have a good ending for us,” Heltke said.
Past stories on the Lehman Brothers closure:
• Rescue Effort Blocked
• White Knight Proposes Lehman Bros. Rescue
• State Steps In To Help Laid-Off Workers
• Booted Workers Seek $180G In Unpaid Benefits
• New Haven’s Lehman Bros., Too, Goes Belly Up
There is something wrong with changing a place of work to a place of residence. I am a big fan of industrial buildings being converted into offices, because those two uses are compatible. While the loss of industry and manufacturing in the country has been one of the leading reasons for poverty, crime, social and cultural degradation, inner city isolation and disinvestment, built environment decay, etc, I realize that bringing industry back to our cities will not be easy, so in the meantime offices are a good use of industrial buildings. The industrial buildings location in various communities is no accident; they are centered to provide jobs within walking distance of housing, or are along major transit routes. Putting housing in this building will cause the continuation of long commutes for existing neighbors, while adding more commuters with the new condos. While some use is better than no use, getting punched in the face is also better than getting punched in the groin.