California Businessman Buys Former Industrial Complex in Waterbury, Conn.

Jun. 17--WATERBURY, Conn.--The long-awaited purchase of the former Anamet Industrial Inc. complex on South Main Street closed Monday, swelling city coffers by more than $1 million.
The 17.5-acre property was purchased from a bankruptcy trustee for $1.45 million by California businessman Donald R. Heye, the owner of one-time Anamet rival HySpan Precision Products Inc. of Chula Vista.
The closing paved the way for the city to receive $1,106,000 for back taxes due on the property. A check arrived in the mayor's office late Monday afternoon, according to Mayor Michael J. Jarjura.
"Even beyond the check we just received, the most significant aspect of this deal is that we can now move that property from our list of nonperforming assets to the list of performing assets," Jarjura said.
Anamet, which manufactured metal hoses used in the automotive and electrical industries and in pay phones, filed for bankruptcy in April 1998. The company abruptly shut its doors in January 2000, leaving about 60 people out of work.
The property, which sits between South Main Street and the Naugatuck River, consists of a 450,000-square-foot main building, a 40,000-square-foot power plant and a 25,000-square-foot annex building. The main building is actually five or six interconnected smaller buildings cobbled together over a period of many years, Heye said.
Heye said his immediate goal is to lease 250,000-square-feet of useable factory and office space at the southern end of the main building. He said the ideal situation would be to find a single tenant willing to rent the entire space to house either a large manufacturing operation or a warehouse-distribution center.
The 250,000-square-feet of usable space includes 12,500-square-feet of office space facing Washington Street at the extreme south end of the building.
"The idea is to get one or two substantial tenants in here instead of a whole bunch of little guys," he said Monday. "One or two major tenants is really the only cost-effective way of using the space."
If he cannot find a large, single tenant Heye said he would be forced to subdivide the area into smaller units, but indicated he would not subdivide the space into anything smaller than 50,000-square-foot compartments.
Both Jarjura and Robert M. Van Geons, the city's economic development director, believe Heye's chances of attracting a large tenant for the space are enhanced by the fact there simply are not that many relatively open, 250,000-square-foot manufacturing spaces with 36-foot-high ceilings available on the local real estate market.
"It's just full of potential," Van Geons said, adding that the city will play a prominent role in helping Heye market the property. "I'm in a hurry to see what kind of interest this property will generate. There just aren't that many vacant footprints out there that are this large."
Heye said he is also planning to market the annex building which is adjacent to an open field, making it an ideal location for a company that needs extra space to store heavy equipment or vehicles. He also said he would attempt to find a smaller manufacturer to rent a 5,000-square-foot section of useable space in the power house.
The 200,000-square-feet of space at the northern end of the main building, which includes Anamet's former corporate and engineering offices, is not easily accessible and has suffered extensive water damage as well as structural damage to the roofs and floors, Heye said. Because of these problems, it is unlikely the space will be leased in the foreseeable future, he said.
"We could probably get the other half of the building back into reasonable shape within two or three months, but, frankly, there's no real incentive to do it, given the (depressed) market for industrial space in this part of the country," he said.
Until demand for industrial space begins to pick up again, Heye said he would probably make no major improvements to the northern half of the building other than to secure it to protect it from further damage from both the weather and vandals.
Heye said efforts to market the property will proceed simultaneously with a $2-million to $2.5-million effort to fix environmental problems at the site, a project he hopes to complete by this winter. Water and sludge contaminated with arsenic and other toxins used in the copper-treatment process must be removed from three or four small areas within the compound while a larger area near the power house was found to be contaminated with heating oil, he said.
"We've got a lot of faith in Mr. Heye; he's definitely the right guy for this job," Jarjura said. "He has a great track record and a lot of contacts in manufacturing circles all over the country."
Heye purchased Anamet's business assets -- including its equipment, supplies and accounts -- for $1.85 million at a bankruptcy auction in March 2000 and then created a division of his Universal Metal Hose in the Plantsville section of Southington, where he employs about 15 workers, including 10 former Anamet employees.
Universal Metal Hose, which is based in Chicago, is a subsidiary of HySpan Precision Products which operates five plants in the United States and Mexico that make metal hoses and related products. The company employs about 350 people at the five plants, Heye said.