In a meeting with laid-off workers, a businessman proposed a last-minute plan to save a shuttered century-old printing company from “cremation.”
Enrique Rosado (at right in photo), a young businessman and arts fabricator, sat down with six unemployed engravers at Brazi’s Restaurant Monday, two days before a fateful hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. A judge is set to rule on a motion Wednesday to sell off tens of thousands of dollars of printing equipment, effectively gutting their former factory.
The workers have been struggling to make ends meet after their employer, a high-end commercial printing press on East Rock, collapsed in Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Dec. 9, leaving 20 people suddenly jobless. Click here, here and here for past stories.
Monday, they heard an 11th-hour proposal from a man who wants to save the building and, possibly, their jobs.
In anticipation of their meeting, the six workers gathered at their usual spot, The Dunkin’ Donuts on East Haven’s Main Street. At it neared four o’clock, they got a message that their mystery investor wasn’t coming there. He thought Brazi’s on Long Wharf would be a more fitting locale for a business meeting.
So the Lehman Brothers buddies hopped in their cars and booked it to Brazi’s. Walking inside from the chilly parking lot, they were welcomed by the smell of warm breadsticks.
“Maybe he’ll buy us pizza!” one worker remarked.
At the end of a carpeted entrance, they met their white knight.
Rosado was sitting at a table, wearing a white button-down shirt and glasses. He got up and shook their hands. Over a two-hour meeting of soup and salad, with multiple rounds of coffee, he laid out his vision for how the two parties might band together to rescue a New Haven institution.
The Rescue Plan
Rosado, a young computer whiz and 1992 Yale graduate, is joined in a partnership with one of his former professors, Austrian sculptor Erwin Hauer. In addition to running his own New Haven-based data storage company, Rosado takes care of the business end of EHR Design Associates.
Erwin Hauer Studios is looking for a new space in which to expand, Rosado explained.
During the meeting, he proposed to buy the building, use part of it for Erwin Hauer, and lease out a 10,000-square-foot space to the workers so they could continue running a commercial printing press.
Monday’s meeting, he said, was to figure out whether the plan could work; whether the laid-off workers were a “rag-tag team,” or a serious group capable of running their own business.
After the meeting, he elaborated on the proposition.
The businessman said he read in the Independent that the Lehman Brothers factory was up for sale. He learned about the workers who, after decades of loving labor in a highly specialized line of work, are having trouble finding new jobs.
While he set about tracking down the workers, he drafted a business plan.
He didn’t have much time: The U.S. bankruptcy trustee, Mike Daly, had already submitted a request to sell off the bulk of the equipment inside the factory for $50,000 to a West Haven company called GHP. The list of assets includes a prized gold-leaf press used to print stationery (such as this dragonfly invite). The sale comes before a judge for approval on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
Rosado knew if he wanted to keep the building as a printing press, he’d have to stop the sale. So on Friday, the last day before a court-set deadline, he filed an objection. Click here to read it.
In his objection, Rosado made an offer: He’d pay $570,000 to buy the three Lehman Brothers buildings, at 191, 197 and 199 Foster St., as well as all the equipment inside.
At that price, the sale would take care of the three liens on the building, Rosado said Monday: a bank lien, a property tax lien and a lien from the union pension fund.
Jan Barber (pictured), who worked at Lehman Brothers for 30 years, said Rosado was encouraging during their talk. He gave them some ideas for using the Internet to move their business forward, she said.
Rosado said if he buys the building, he would live in the residential quarters. But he wouldn’t be part of the resurrected Lehman operation.
Could the workers secure the staff and the capital to run a company?
“It’s completely in the air,” said Barber.
Right off the bat, she identified a couple big challenges: One bundle of inventory, including high-end paper, has already been sold off, so the group would need capital at a time when getting a loan is tough.
And the crew would need someone with business expertise to take the helm.
“I don’t know anything about business except going there and working,” she cracked.
She said the union will round up its members and look for candidates willing to run the outfit.
Since the layoff, Barber has spent her time helping a friend clean up an animal shelter and studying to be a certified nursing assistant. She took hope in Rosado’s plan: “He’s giving us a chance to reorganize and start the company going again.”
The vision “may never happen,” she said, but the six workers at the table certainly wished it would.
Rosado encouraged the crew to show up at Wednesday’s hearing and lobby the bankruptcy judge to stop the sale.
“Lehman Brothers is dead,” he pronounced. “Wednesday is the cremation.”
By showing up on Wednesday, the workers would get a chance to avoid that second fateful step, he said.
“It’s up to them.”
Past stories on the Lehman Brothers Company:
• State Steps In To Help Laid-Off Workers
• Booted Workers Seek $180G In Unpaid Benefits
‚Ä¢ New Haven’s Lehman Bros., Too, Goes Belly Up
Tell Melissa that's stationEry puhleeeze! The "ary" version describes what happens to companies David Perkins attempts to run, as in still, stationAry, going nowhere, unmoving, and other actions of a ne'er-do-well