Remington Rand Deal DOA?

At a budget presentation Thursday in Westfield, Mayor Sebastian Giuliano declared that the deal the city made to sell the former Remington Rand typewriter factory to TWB Properties, is dead.

"The Remington Rand deal is not going through," Giuliano said to the assembled group of Westfield and Middletown residents.

The mayor explained that the broken deal, which appeared to be imminent for months, will be a problem for the city since the Common Council voted to appropriate the $1.2 million revenue from the expected sale of the building in the fiscal year 2009 budget. The mayor explained that the loss of the revenue from the deal, which he later in the meeting described as likely dead deal, will mean a significant budget shortfall.

"I vetoed the budget specifically for that reason," Giuliano said today. "They were counting chickens before they were hatched. They overrode my veto because they said there were three prospective buyers. I don't think any of those buyers want the $5 million liability now."

The land deal apparently fell apart over the remediation of heavy metals in the soil which would cost $5 million dollars to clean. While former owner Unisys is responsible for the cleanup, fiscal problems at that company, and the state's unwillingness to require a cleanup bond from the company, means that the cleanup burden is too much for the proposed buyer to bear.