A Manhattan industrial supply company will relocate next spring to the New Rochelle plant where Bakers Pride Oven Co. Inc. closed manufacturing operations this year.
Pearlgreen Corp. paid $5.6 million for the single-story, 111,563-square-foot industrial building on a 3.75-acre parcel at 30 Pine St. Brokers at CB Richard Ellis in Stamford, Conn., who represented the seller, said it is the largest industrial sale to date this year in Westchester County.
A 75-year-old, family owned company, Pearlgreen occupies a 35,000-square-foot building on West 131st Street in the industrial Manhattanville section of West Harlem. The third-generation company is one of several businesses within a 17-acre area that have agreed to sell their properties to Columbia University to make way for the university”™s 25-year campus expansion project.
A Pearlgreen principal did not respond to a request for comment last week on the number of jobs the company will bring to New Rochelle.
The seller, Bakers Pride Oven Co., a pizza oven and cooking appliances manufacturer, is a subsidiary of Standex International Corp., which acquired the company in 2007 as part of its acquisition of APW Wyott, a food service equipment manufacturer based in Dallas, Texas. When announcing the New Rochelle closing last March, Standex officials in New Hampshire said a weak restaurant industry left the Bakers Pride plant operating below capacity to the point where it was no longer self-sufficient.
CB Richard Ellis brokers said Bakers Pride assembly and distribution operations have moved to a company-owned facility in New Jersey. Standex in its annual report said cookware production was transferred from New Rochelle to Standex Food Service Equipment Group facilities in Mexico and Wyoming. The company reported 80 layoffs with the New Rochelle closing to the state Labor Department.
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The Bakers Pride customer service department has relocated in New Rochelle to a 2,058-square-foot mezzanine office at 145 Huguenot St. CB Richard Ellis brokers also negotiated that two-year lease.
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Bakers Pride was represented in the sale by William V. Cuddy, executive vice president at CB Richard Ellis, Budd Wiesenberg, vice president, and Kevin Langtry, senior associate in the firm”™s Stamford office.
“We are pleased to have secured a buyer for 30 Pine St. right out of the gates,” Wiesenberg said in a written statement. “In the current economic environment, we are fortunate to have found a motivated buyer in less than six months.”
“Often in Westchester as industrial users vacate their properties they are converted to other alternative uses,” said Langtry. “This sale is especially rewarding, as Pearlgreen”™s expansion will create additional jobs in New Rochelle.”
Joel Feinberg, of Feinberg Brothers Agency Inc. in the Bronx, represented Pearlgreen in the purchase.
The relocating company supplies residential and commercial buildings and construction sites throughout the metropolitan New York and tri-state area with more than 15,000 building maintenance, contractor and janitorial products from 400 manufacturers. Irving and Pearl Greenberg founded the company in 1934.
