UI turning off lights at Shelton facility

A Missouri family reached a deal to acquire a large industrial parcel in Shelton owned by United Illuminating Co., which must obtain approval from state regulators before completing the deal.

The property at the intersection of Bridgeport Avenue and Parrott Drive comprises multiple buildings on 19 acres, including 55,000 square feet of office space, a warehouse less than half that size and a maintenance garage.

The Enosnas Family Holding Co. L.L.C., the buyer, did not immediately disclose its plans for the property.

New Haven-based United Illuminating has used the site as a western outpost for its field construction and engineering operations, and said it is selling the property as part of an existing plan to relocate operations to a new facility on Marsh Hill Road in Orange. That central facility is under construction at a cost of about $115 million and when completed will absorb multiple work centers. It is United Illuminating”™s largest project since completing a new GenConn electricity generation plant in Middletown, which it owns in a joint venture with NRG.

United Illuminating provides electricity service in the greater Bridgeport area, with parent company UIL Corp. also selling natural gas as home-heating fuel via multiple other subsidiaries. With UIL adding its gas subsidiaries last November, the company”™s second quarter revenue was up by half to $314 million and UIL recorded an $18.9 million profit.

“The recovery, as everyone knows, has been extremely slow,” said Jim Torgerson, CEO of UIL, in a conference call with investment analysts the first week of August. “Our major cities are trailing the national (unemployment) average, Bridgeport and New Haven, in particular.”

United Illuminating hired Westport-based Vidal/Wettenstein as its broker for the Shelton property and originally listed it at $12.9 million. It received four offers and settled for a $10.4 million sale price. United Illuminating originally bought the Shelton premises in 2004 for $16 million, halfway through a 20-year lease; it said it expects to recover any loss resulting from the sale through the regulatory process, without providing specifics.

The deal is contingent upon approval from Connecticut”™s new Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, which under the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy took the regulatory reins previously held by the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control. PURA is under the purview of the new Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The site also engaged the attention of federal regulators last November, when the Environmental Protection Agency queried United Illuminating regarding the storage of PCB materials that the agency said were shipped through the Shelton facility between 2006 and 2010 en route to waste-disposal facilities. The EPA subsequently alerted the company it intended to file an administrative complaint and assess a civil penalty “of an immaterial amount,” in United Illuminating”™s words, and the company said it expected to hold discussions with the EPA in the current quarter to resolve the issue.