UPDATE (11/20/07): The following passage has been removed. It was erroneous information contained on an EPA brownfield grant application, which has since been corrected. Girindus America has no plans to expand at the current time.
Girindus America has already said it would like to acquire 20,000 square feet of new lab space and to create 85 new jobs.
The City of Reading will soon be accepting bids for the demolition and environmental remediation of the former Nivison-Weiskopf complex.
In late October, Councilmember Robert Ashbrock said that the city planned to advertise for bids on October 31, with a bid opening on November 15. A public notice for the bids has not yet been posted.
The 11.7-acre site contains 155,000 square feet of buildings, a third of which are structurally unsafe.
Site assessment also revealed petroleum in the groundwater near the rail loading dock and in the area around the rail corridor. Petroleum contaminant and PC has also been detected in the soil.
For remediation, the city recently applied for a $200,000 U.S. EPA Brownfields Petroleum Cleanup Grant.
The rest of the estimated $262,000 in remediation costs will be supplemented with a Job Ready Sites Grant and local funds.
Total cleanup and demolition costs for the entire site are estimated at just over $3.5 million.
The land will likely be used for a much-needed expansion of the 59-acre Reading Life Sciences Complex, a research and technology park housing 1,000 jobs and comprised of the Genome Research Institute of the University of Cincinnati, Girindus America, and Patheon Pharmaceuticals.
The former director of UC's Genome Research Institute estimates that the Nivison-Weiskopf site could support 100,000 square feet of new lab and office space at a cost of about $50 million, with about 400 jobs created and $15 million-$20 million in increased payroll.
Reading has lost 26 percent of its businesses in the last five years.
To facilitate the business park expansion, a research and development zone was created for the site and for several adjacent properties on Fourth Street in September.
The city would like to have demolition work completed by July 2008.
Nivison-Weiskopf manufactured glass bottles in the facility between the early 1900s and the 1990s. The property has been vacant since the city purchased it in 2006.
Previous reading on BC:
Reading: Demolition of the Nivison-Weiskopf factory (3/20/07)
