SHARON Winner continues work on project

Work on the project has never stopped, despite problems in securing a grant, Winner said.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- James E. Winner Jr. said it bugs him to hear people say that nothing is happening with his plans to redevelop the former Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant on Sharpsville Avenue.
The project drew attention recently after the state announced that a $7 million grant to help finance the project had been withdrawn because, among other things, Winner had reduced the scope of the work.
Winner, who is developing the site as Winner Development LLC, said he plans to reapply for that funding, and he led a tour of the property Friday to show what is going on at the site.
"The project's never really stopped," he said as he pointed out expansion work for a third line for his Winner Steel Services Inc. plant, a steel coil galvanizing operation at the southern end of the property.
That project will cost about $35 million, financed by Winner, he said.
The work is part of the original $77 million project on which the $7 million state grant was based.
He's also put in a rail line in a separate project to bring in steel coils and haul out the galvanized product. The steel operation is also drawing more than 100 trucks a day, he said.
Contracts awarded
Contracts for the construction of the new 150,000-square-foot building have been awarded, and the foundation work is under way. Material for the steel building will arrive in early November, and construction should be completed by mid-January.
The new galvanizing line will be installed and ready to go by November or December 2003, he said.
The project will double Winner Steel's capacity of about 45,000 tons a month and raise the payroll from 225 to between 300 and 325 employees, Winner said.
Meanwhile, environmental remediation work in the remaining portion of the old Westinghouse plant, about 880,000 square feet, is nearing completion, Winner said.
All but a very small portion of the walls and ceilings in the plant have been pressure washed to remove polychlorinated biphenyls and lead paint and have been repainted.
About a third of the floor space has been cleaned, with the remainder to be done over the next four to six weeks.
Government certification
At that point, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which put the plant on the Superfund hazardous waste site list in 1990, and the state Department of Environmental Protection are expected to issue a letter certifying that the plant is clean enough to be occupied for industrial purposes, said Sam Messina, a former Westinghouse employee who now serves as Winner's cleanup project director.
Winner said he's spent about $8 million on the remediation work, which includes $2.75 million in state loans.
Messina said Westinghouse spent an additional $12 million on exterior ground cleanup and Westinghouse successors spent about $3 million more.
"We'll stop now until we get tenants," Winner said, explaining it makes no sense to add amenities to the building until he knows what tenants might need.
Winner said the old plant, complete with 11 overhead cranes ranging from 5 to 125 tons in capacity, and the adjacent 160,000-square-foot office building will be ready to be marketed as Winner Industrial Park.
What's left to do
All that remains is the completion of the remediation work, roof repairs and a refacing of the south wall of the plant with sheet metal. Contracts for that work have already been awarded, Winner said.
The big concrete "W" atop the south wall will remain, he said, noting it will now stand for "Winner" instead of "Westinghouse."
Winner said he has no tenants ready to move into the plant. There has been interest but it was impossible to negotiate a lease because, until now, there were no guarantees as to when the plant would be ready, he said.
He said he has been in negotiations with a company looking to manufacture gas hoods to replace old-style gas masks. That company could occupy a small section of the plant, Winner said.