County sells Guilford Mills complex in Cobleskill

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ned Campbell

The long-empty Guilford Mills complex sits across from the Cobleskill village offices at the intersection of South Grand Street and Mineral Springs Road in this 2014 photo.

A Cobleskill-based company has stepped up to buy the former Guilford Mills facility after a $2.5 million deal with Green Recycling Solutions International fell through last month.

The Schoharie County Board of Supervisors on Sept. 18 accepted a $400,000 offer from EFJ Inc., doing business as Mill Services, to buy the entire 468,000-square-foot former textile mill in Cobleskill.

“I’m very confident that this one will happen,” said Schoharie County Treasurer and Economic Development Director Bill Cherry, who added that “$400,000 sounds like a low price, but the truth is the county has owned this facility now for six years. We have had three different deals at sale prices of about $2.5 million each. All three fell apart in one way or another.”

The company will likely have to invest about $1 million in immediate renovations, said co-owner James Place, and maybe another million down the road.

In an email, Cherry noted that the purchase price is “not really that far off” from what the county expected from GRSI after job-creation credits that would have reduced the balance to about $385,000.

“I think it’s a fair deal,” he said. “It’s fair to everyone involved in that this property goes back on the tax rolls, an existing company in Schoharie County expands and once that building is brought back to life, more employers will occupy those spaces.”

The Guilford Mills facility has been vacant since 2001. The county took it for unpaid back taxes in 2009, and since then three deals for its purchase have fallen through.

Mill Services has been in business on MacArthur Avenue in Cobleskill since 1993, manufacturing and distributing specialized lumber.

In a letter to Cherry, Mill Services co-owner Daniel Holt outlined the company’s plan to restore the facility back to an industrial property, with 25 percent used to expand the company’s manufacturing and storage. The other 75 percent will be renovated and leased to other businesses.

Town of Cobleskill Supervisor Leo McAllister called the company “a great partner for our community.”

“I’m really glad to see them taking an interest in the Guilford Mills property, because they’re a company that’s making money, they’re interested in purchasing it outright and also interested in setting up some kind of program in which we start getting some tax revenue.”

In the letter, Holt asks for a 10-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with payments of $40,000 for the first three years and $60,000 for the following seven. Cherry said that is still under negotiation and an alternative solution may be sought.

The company currently has about 70 employees in its Cobleskill facility, which will remain open. Place said it’s hard to say how many new jobs will be created with the expansion.

Place said they had been eyeing the Guilford site for a few years and when the GRSI deal fell through, “the timing was right.”

“The business has grown and thrived, and we’ve done several physical expansions to that facility [on MacArthur Avenue],” he said. “It’s just gotten to a point in our business where we feel like in the next few years we’re going to need additional space.”

The Guilford Mills facility was being groomed as a START-UP NY hub, with a handful of companies approved under the state’s tax-incentive program, when GRSI backed out due to lack of funding. Since then, one of the companies, Echelon Materials, has cut ties with the START-UP program. A company representative declined to comment further.

That leaves three companies still engaged with the program that had planned to move into Guilford Mills, according to Jason Evans, associate professor of agricultural business management at SUNY Cobleskill and the campus representative for START-UP NY.

Evans said Thursday that the purchase of the facility by Mill Services “doesn’t in and of itself affect the designation of 125,000 square feet of the site as a START-UP NY tax-free zone,” and he’s continuing to work with the remaining businesses to get them set up in Schoharie County.

Place said he and Holt would be “very interested” in talking to the START-UP companies about leasing space in the new facility. According to Cherry, Mill Services was not interested in applying for START-UP status.

The deal is expected to close within the next few months, Cherry said.

The county Board of Supervisors approved the sale unanimously, which McAllister said was proof of supervisors’ faith in the deal, despite previous disappointments.

“They’re certainly an existing company that’s profitable and well known,” Cherry said. “This is a whole different thing than selling to a company that had hopes and plans.”