DeWitt, NY – A company that specializes in redeveloping old industrial sites has purchased the former Oberdorfer foundry on Thompson Road and plans to demolish it.
Northern Industrial Holdings LLC, of Delaware, acquired the 230,000-square-foot foundry and the 17.5-acre property it sits on July 24, said Christopher Westfall, a sales agent with Pyramid Brokerage Co. He declined to disclose the purchase price.
Northern acquired the property from Wre Properties LLC, the real estate entity that owned the foundry, said Westfall, who represented Wre in the sale and is representing the new owners in their redevelopment efforts.
Westfall said the investors behind Northern Industrial Holdings do not want their names disclosed. They plan to demolish the entire foundry by the end of October after salvaging old bricks, wood timbers and anything else of value, he said.
Exactly what will replace the foundry has not been determined. Westfall said the new owners will look for a manufacturer for the rear of the property. The front of the property, which has 1,000 feet of frontage on Thompson Road, will likely become a retail and commercial development such as a hotel and restaurant or a big-box retail store, he said.
Westfall said Thompson Road is ideal for major retail development because of the large amount of traffic on it, much of it headed to nearby Carrier Circle, the many hotels off the circle, the Thruway and industrial sites farther north.
The new owners are hoping redevelopment of the site will help change the public’s image of Thompson Road as an industrial road. Once one of Onondaga County’s industrial centers, Thompson Road no longer has much industry on it. Oberdorfer is gone and Carrier Corp. has converted its campus from a manufacturing facility to a research and development center.
Oberdorfer’s owner, Advanced Metals Group LLC, announced in February that it was shutting down the foundry, one of the Syracuse area’s oldest manufacturers, because of rising costs and falling sales of its aluminum castings. The shutdown, which was completed July 12, cost 86 employees their jobs.
Founded in 1875, Oberdorfer opened the Thompson Road facility in 1919.
Source: syracuse.com