By Kelly Regan
Staff Writer
The Charleston Gazette, Monday, January 24, 2000
Last week, FMC broke off negotiations with the South Charleston Area Development Corp. to sell about 25 acres of land across from The Mound.
The decision is good news for about 100 workers at FMC's Spring Hill plant. But Steve Weir, president of the development agency, said he was somewhat disappointed.
"We would have liked to have had a large-scale industry park, but it's their property and they obviously feel they need a fairly large portion to maintain the Spring Hill plant, " Weir said.
The property has been vacant and polluted since 1985, when FMC tore down a chemical manufacturing plant. In 1997, FMC became the first company to enter a voluntary environmental cleanup program created the year before by the Legislature.
An extensive environmental investigation of the site has since been completed. That doesn't mean the entire lot is safe. Some areas still need several years of cleaning up, and the groundwater will not be useable for "many, many" years, said Jim Bodamer, FMC's remediation project manager.
But within the next six months, about six acres along MacCorkle Avenue and the Kanawha River, and four acres the company has promised to donate to South Charleston for an ice rink, should be ready for development, Bodamer said.
Weir wanted the option to buy the entire 25-acre lot to attract new industry into South Charleston. But FMC officials have decided to keep the property and sell the small section along MacCorkle themselves.
Weir and other local business leaders hope FMC will sell the land along MacCorkle for light industrial or commercial use. But the highest bidder may be another retail development like Rite Aid, which bought land from FMC in 1996.
A steam plant and a hydrogen peroxide plant remain on the property now. They support FMC's Spring Hill plant, the company's last remaining operation in the Kanawha Valley.
FMC officials had planned to close the hydrogen and steam plants, and sell them with the rest of the land to Weir for an industrial park. Last Tuesday, however, Bodamer told Weir the company would keep them open.
"Our hydrogen peroxide business is doing good right now, and it's projected to continue to do good so the reformer and the steam plant are staying right where they're at," Bodamer said.
"We'll take that any day," Weir said.
Bill Goode at the Business and Industrial Development Corp. agreed. He's been working with Weir to develop the lot. But he also hoped FMC would keep the property for manufacturing.
"We definitely have a severe shortage of light industrial or heavy industrial sites in the valley so we're always trying to protect or hold onto those locations. There's been a lot of retail that's been added to the marketplace in the last few years and we'd like to see something other than retail there," Goode said.
Bodamer couldn't guarantee the land would not be sold for retail. An acre of land for industrial use sells for $45,000-$50,000. An acre of land for retail sells for $190,000-$200,000, he said.
"It would depend on who makes an offer and what we can negotiate," Bodamer said. "We're not out to make money on this deal."
The important issue is not who sells the property, but that the property will be sold, he said. The company has spent more that $3 million on the property for the past 10 years.
"We want to return this property to the community for some beneficial use," Bodamer said, "We feel it's our responsibility."
That was the idea of the Voluntary Remediation ad Redevelopment Bill, which passed in the Legislature in 1996, said David Hight, project manager in the Division of Environmental Protection's office of environmental remediation.
Twenty-eight sites are now enrolled in the program. Twenty-one are former industrial sites, the largest of which is the former industrial sites, the largest of which is the former Spelter Smelter on 120 acres in Harrison County. The remaining seven sites are leaking underground storage tanks at former gas stations.
"The primary goal is to use industrial sites that already have infrastructure and are located in towns that need the jobs and then to preserve farm land and forest," Hight said.
Bodamer said corporate responsibility led FMC to enter the program in 1997. Hight said companies often enter for financial reasons.
"When they carry an environmental liability like this, they carry it on their books," he said. "They have to carry their liabilities against their own assets. So, it frees them up to borrow money or use that asset for borrowing money," Hight said.
Robb said Wednesday the city's Area Development Corp. is in the final stages of a deal with FMC Corp. that would bring close to 25 acres to the city. Four of those acres are marked to be donated to city government, and that's where Robb's dream of an ice rink may come true. The property is on the Kanawha River side of MacCorkle Avenue close to D Street.