A $4.5 million deal to purchase the former Saint Gobain/Carborundum Coated Abrasives building at Niagara Falls International Airport may be unraveling, sources told the Reporter.
The 500,000-square-foot building, located at the eastern end of the airport runway, was targeted for use as a major cargo handling and warehouse facility by the Niagara Falls Air Cargo Consortium, a group headed by Toronto developer Edwin Cogan.
In May, Cogan announced the sale of the property would close in 60 days, and that construction of a concrete apron to accommodate large jets would begin shortly afterward. Cogan owns a 50 percent interest in Vista Cargo International, which operates a cargo facility at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. For the Niagara Falls project, he would partner with Speed Transportation, a Kenmore firm specializing in long-distance trucking with warehouse holdings throughout the Niagara Frontier, and O'Shanter Development, a Canadian real estate company that obtained an option on the building, he said.
Officials of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which has controlled the moribund airport for three decades, enthusiastically endorsed the proposal, and held a news conference to tout the progress they were making on getting the facility up and running.
What wasn't announced is that the St. Gobain property sits on a federally designated Superfund toxic waste site, and that a multimillion-dollar cleanup will be necessary before it can be used for anything.
"This proposal was dead on arrival," said county Legislator Renae Kimble, who also sits on the board of the county Industrial Development Agency. "There's no money left in the Superfund, and there's no evidence that any of the principals have the money to do the remediation themselves."
Cogan admitted the sale had not gone through as planned, but said talks were continuing.
"If you can't fix the site, you can't close on the site," he said. "We're in the middle of the due diligence process, and I should know by the end of the week whether it's going to happen or not."
Both Kimble and Cogan were involved in the formation of the Niagara Airport Development Corp., a subsidiary of the IDA designed to return the airport to local control. That deal fell apart when the principals were unable to obtain the $30 million in financing they said would be needed to get the facility up and running.
Currently, the only commercial use of the airport is by Kitty Hawk Aviation, a cargo hauler that lands a couple of planes a week. The cargo is then loaded onto trucks and taken to warehouses in Amherst, and the service has resulted in no jobs in Niagara County and no revenue for the airport.
Recently Cogan made headlines by announcing his intention to sever ties with his partner, New York real estate mogul Howard Milstein. Cogan and Milstein are principals in Niagara Falls Redevelopment, a company controlling much of the real estate surrounding the Seneca Niagara Casino.
While unrelated to the airport deal, the Cogan-Milstein feud is certain to end up in court, and promises to provide newspaper writers with reams of copy for years to come.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 29 2003 |