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Intermet 2009 update...A couple of weeks ago I did a story on the status of " Intermet 2009 " . This was mostly to answer questions I had received from viewers over the last year. One of the most asked questions was regarding the ownership. At the time of that previous story all I had was that the Havana property was owned by a company named 227 Wagner Ave LLC. This information was not wrong but it was not the whole story. I was able to get the mailing address of this company and had just sat down to write them a snail mail for more information when I decided to do a little more searching with the new information. In the mean time a viewer emailed me with the same information I had just found. It seems that 227 Wagner Ave LLC is a company set up to purchase and demolish the Intermet facility by another company named Cat Iron, Inc. located at the above satellite photo on Google maps at the address of 587 Covered Bridge Road in Oley, PA 19547. You can visit this map yourself which has other information available there just click this link... Google Map Cat Iron, Inc.
I then wondered if it would be possible to track down the principles of the ‘227 Wagner Ave LLC’ company using business registration records from the state of Ohio. I did a search and here’s what I found (see links below):
http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/reports/rwservlet?imgc&Din=200806300762
Although I was unable
to find any references to a Timothy Fogerty (the person of record who paid
the local taxes), I was able to find the Ohio articles of organization for
the ‘227 Wagner Ave LLC’ company which were signed by a Ms. Jodi Rich
(http://www.ulmer.com/attorneys/Rich_Jodi/Pages/default.aspx)
on behalf of an Ulmer & Berne, LLP law firm (http://www.ulmer.com/Pages/default.aspx),
located in Cleveland, Ohio. U&B is listed as the statutory agent on the
form. Notably, Ms. Rich’s bio states that she specializes in “commercial
real estate acquisitions and sales, including properties with unique
circumstances such as environmental contamination”.
Please note that I found about a dozen or so companies whose names were street addresses associated with Jodi Rich (and this law firm) similar to the ‘227 Wagner Ave LLC’ company (example = http://www.gobignetwork.com/business-profiles/1509715/12700-FAIRHILL-ROAD-LLC.aspx). This leads me to suspect that this law firm is either the actual owner of this site or represents a person or persons who specifically target contaminated facilities that nobody else wants in order to get them for a low price. It then seems that they set up a cover company using the street address of each facility to purchase the site, then go in and strip the site of anything valuable that can be resold. Once the sites are stripped, they’re probably just forgotten. Since most municipalities don’t have ordinances requiring companies to tear down derelict structures, most are probably left to rot once they’re stripped.
Now don't take this information the wrong way, I am not trying to imply that there is anything wrong with this, in fact it is all legal and probably done on a daily basis all over the world. I do wonder what will happen down the road with this facility.
