Former factory building in city sold

By Adam Tobias of the Daily Times staff
Friday, September 5, 2008 3:00 PM CDT

The former Applied Molded Products building on South Montgomery Street has been sold, the previous owner confirmed Thursday.

According to Dipesh Bhise, executive vice president of Mooring Financial Corp. in Vienna, Va., the 10.3-acre site has been purchased by Montgomery Properties LLC of Waukesha.

Susan Leverson, a bookkeeper for Montgomery Properties, said her company is looking to reposition the parcel in the marketplace.

“We expect to take care of it, find tenants and draw commerce,” Leverson said. “The goal is to take care of any deferred maintenance and attract tenants into it. Because the property has been sort of vacant for so long we can basically do anything. Everything is open to us. It's basically an open book right now.”

Karen Johnson of NAI MLG Commercial, a company that is representing Montgomery Properties in the transaction, said the 191,000-square-foot building will be repositioned from a single-tenant facility into several smaller multitenant units.

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“The active industrial market is heavily comprised of companies requiring small buildings of approximately 10,000 square feet and up,” Johnson said. “The property is configured so that the division into smaller units can be accomplished. Successful leasing of these smaller units will bring jobs, commerce and an increased tax base to the Watertown marketplace.”

Johnson added NAI MLG Commercial is currently pursuing logistics, warehousing, distribution or manufacturing companies to lease space at the site.

“We are excited to attract tenants to this multi-use location and believe that the upside is tremendous,” Johnson said.

“The buyer is an experienced real estate developer and investor, and I think the good news is the buyer would be able to put property back into more of a productive use, which I think overall is good for the city of Watertown and the local economy,” Bhise added.

Because the city's new public works facility is currently under construction, the street department has been renting out a 55,600-square-foot portion of the Applied Molded building for office use and equipment storage.

The street department rental agreement runs until Jan. 31, 2009, but the city has the option to renew the lease on a month-by-month basis for an additional eight months.

Street department Superintendent Rick Schultz said even with the sale of the property, the city will be able to use the building until the new public works facility is completed.

“We still have until January, but we have to let them know by the 15th of January if we are going to renew it for the month of February,” Schultz said. “We have been told by our city attorney that the lease is still in effect until that date.”

Except for the recent use by the street department, the Applied Molded Products facility has been vacant since the company closed its doors in 2001.

Approximately 100 Applied Molded Products employees were given a permanent notice of layoffs in January 2001 because of what the firm's officials called a downturn in business. The entire operation was shut down in April later that year.

After the plant closed, 39 former employees received payment in an out-of-court settlement because the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development found the business violated the state's business closing notification law.

The workers claimed the company violated their rights to be notified of a shutdown 60 days in advance of the closure.

Officials of Applied Molded Products argued they did not violate the notification statute because the closure was unforeseen because of the unexpected cancellation of a major contract, therefore no notice was required.

According to the settlement, the 39 employees received checks totaling $100,288.53, pro-rated, which represented approximately 50 percent of the increased wages found owing by the Department of Workforce Development.

The presence of Applied Molded Products, which was known for many years as The G.B. Lewis Company, in Watertown dates back to 1863. In its early years The G.B. Lewis Company was known as the world's largest manufacturer of beeware.

Originally located on South Water Street along the Rock River at the location of the present lower dam, the company shifted its operation to the South Montgomery Street location after a fire destroyed the five-story building in June of 1909.

As the company evolved throughout the decades, wood and wire material handling containers, golf ball washers, wooden Venetian blinds and wooden airplane propellers became the firm's trademark products.

To remain competitive in the marketplace, in the late 1940s the company began an intensive research program using fiberglass reinforced plastic as a material for industrial handling containers. In 1949 G.B. Lewis became the first company to produce a fiberglass tote pan.

The G.B. Lewis Company operated as an independent firm under the ownership of the Frater family until it became affiliated with Menasha Corp. in 1955. The company was split into two divisions after Menasha purchased 100 percent of the business in 1974.

One division remained with Menasha as LEWISystems and later became known as Orbis Division of Menasha Corp. Because of rapid growth, LEWISystems was moved at the end of 1984 to a new building at 128 Hospital Drive. By the fall of 1996 it had outgrown the Hospital Drive facility and moved to the Oconomowoc industrial park.

The other division was Molded Products which was sold in 1997 to Universal Partners, a private investment group based in Memphis, Tenn. That group renamed the facility to what was known as Applied Molded Products.