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Mayor: Delphi selling vacant buildings
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Delphi Corp. will announce within three weeks that it is selling its 720,000 square feet of former production and office facilities on Dana and Griswold streets, Mayor Michael O’Brien said.
“They have a buyer. I don’t know if that buyer is for demolition purposes or to keep them and re-use them,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien’s comments come on the heels of the city’s filing a demolition order for the facilities Dec. 29 that said the buildings are unsafe because they are not secured, not patrolled sufficiently by Delphi and present a fire hazard.
The order gives the company until March 1, 2012, to complete the demolition.
The buildings, where Packard Electric got its start more than 100 years ago, have been vacant since 2006. Six thousand people once worked there.
“The building is unsafe, unsightly and creating an unsafe area for neighbors, police and firefighters,” the mayor said.
O’Brien said news of a fire in an abandoned Chicago warehouse Dec. 22 that killed two firefighters made him think immediately of the Warren Delphi facilities.
“I thought of Plant 3 right away,” O’Brien said of one of the parts of the Delphi complex, because of wooden floors that are inside.
In a 2006 court filing, Delphi said the buildings were not a fire hazard because they were secured and patrolled, and there was “virtually nothing to burn.”
But in recent years, copper thieves have torn down slats of wall board in efforts to get into the walls to steal copper wiring and pipes, and the wall board is littered throughout the buildings, said Chris Taneyhill, Warren’s chief building official.
That wood is flammable, Taneyhill said, adding that there is evidence that people have started fires in the Delphi buildings, apparently to stay warm.
O’Brien said he believes the sale of the facilities is likely to be good news for the city because the likely outcomes are that the new company will use the buildings again and create employment or demolish the buildings and create an industrial park.
“We’ll be a lot better off,” O’Brien said of the city. “It’s been a 31/2-year battle” with Delphi.
O’Brien said the city stands ready to assist the next owner of the buildings with tax abatements or brownfield remediation or whatever else is available.
Councilman Al Novak, whose ward includes the Delphi buildings, said he noticed that the biggest problems with vandalism and theft at the buildings starting in October 2009, after Delphi shut out the lights to the plants to save electricity.
“As soon as they did that, boom, the damage occurred,” Novak said, adding that he’s been kept in the dark about Delphi’s plans by O’Brien and by Delphi, which refuses to talk to him. Novak added that he’s seen very little evidence that security personnel are watching the buildings in recent years.