"It's not going to be a stamping plant," mentioned Cleveland banker Ray Park, who owns the 922,000-square-foot office building at 3100 MacCorkle Ave. SW. "We've talked to sufficient stamping companies around the country, you know the direction in stamping plants has vanished the other way. They're putting them next to public plants.
"We motionless a year ago at least that it won't be a stamping plant," he said.
Park paid for the plant's properties for $18 million in 2006 after the formerly operators went bankrupt. In May 2007, then-Gov. Joe Manchin committed a $15 million state loan to remodel the plant and Park voiced he would deposit $20 million.
In late 2006 and early 2007, Park renovated the plant, reconfigured its hulk presses and commissioned 45 state-of-the-art robots in hopes of stamping steel vehicle parts. He re-named the plant Charleston Stamping Manufacturing and published a website at www.charlestonstamping
.com that includes a video debae that showcases the robotic press line.
The robots are still in the plant, Park said. "Any time you wish to sell the equipment, you could sell it."
Park has high commendation for Rolland Phillips, the West Virginia Development Office's comparison executive of business influence and expansion. Park and Phillips have well known any other for 30 years.
"Rolland has been really willing to help and the state has been assisting with advertising," Park said. "They've sent a few promotion to Indonesia and Japan. We're carrying out the same."
A year ago Phillips told the South Charleston Economic Development Authority that the state was working to come together FMC Corp.'s 70-acre site in Spring Hill with the stamping plant skill to give more outward storage area. Park was asked if anything has come of that.
"We paid for 3 or 4 pieces next to the stamping plant, on the west end," he said. "We might purchase a few more from FMC but it is not nec! essary. It would arrange of be an insurance policy. It's good to have extra land."
FMC's hydrogen peroxide plant sits on the west side of the stamping plant. The FMC plant was mothballed in 2003 and in 2008 FMC stop work distilling and distributing hydrogen peroxide there. An FMC orator mentioned in 2009 that it would finally be demolished.
FMC's scarcely 45-acre fly-ash pond, that is on the other side of the hydrogen peroxide plant, hasn't been used given FMC shuttered its steam plant in 2003.
Phillips mentioned final year that Park has invested more than $40 million in the plant and has completed all he can to find a new tenant, inclusive drifting to Germany to encounter a prospect.
Park said, "We've outlayed a lot of allowance and you go on to outlay money. We're really optimistic. We're redoing the offices inside the plant correct now."
Although it won't be a stamping plant again, "a lot of industries would fit there perfectly," Park said. "Within year to a year and a half, I hope we've come to a close to anticipating the correct company."
Park mentioned he has sealed confidentiality agreements with all of the potential tenants and thus he can't name them. "They are all complicated manufacturing," he mentioned of the prospects. "That's what the office building is built for."
John Whitney, who has worked for Park for 40 years, is in assign of a tiny organisation that is progressing the plant.
The plant has 150-ton and 200-ton up above cranes and simply binds tyrannise boxcars. For many years it was the largest space beneath roof tiles in the state of West Virginia.
Contact bard George Hohmann at busin...@dailymail.com or 304-348-4836.