S&W Redevelopment of North America projects sales boost: To generate $6 million during 2008 – New York Real Estate Journal - April 22-28, 2008: 16 B
by Kristina Martino
A local company is playing a big role in the state’s effort to clean up and redevelop abandoned industrial sites. It’s leading to strong sales growth for S&W Redevelopment of North America, LLC. S&W said it remediated about one-third of the 24 NYS sites issued certificates of completion through the state’s brownfield cleanup program in 2006.
“As S&W’s expertise in the brownfield program continues to million or more, Maliga said. S&W, located at 430 E. Genesee St., acquires brownfield sites, remediates them, and redevelops them into usable properties. S&W holds an in-house real estate brokerage license and manages a portfolio of properties it owns, sells, rents, and leases. David Stoner, Robert Petrovich, and Damian Vanetti equally own S&W.
An average remediation project can take two to three years to S&W started in 1998 as a “spin off ” of environmental-consulting firm Stearns and Wheler, LLC, based in Cazenovia. Prior to starting S&W, a division within Stearns & Wheler conducted hazardous environmental waste cleanup. It didn’t officially break apart from Stearns & Wheler until 2006. Prior to that, common ownership existed between the two parts of the company. S&W first identified properties in the city that were tax delinquent and most likely contaminated. Maliga said at the time the city was reluctant to foreclose on these properties because the contamination then became the city’s responsibility.
“That was a way for us to get into this business with not a lot of capital,” Maliga said. By 2001, S&W decided that it needed to move to a site it could redevelop and showcase the work the company does. S&W acquired the 430 E. Genesee St. property through an LLC named Route 20/20 LLC. Maliga described the former property as a facility that needed a lot of work and renovations, but wasn’t considered a brownfield site for the state program. The six-story building is 108 years old and 47,952 s/f. S&W utilizes about 5,000 s/f and leases out the remaining space. Some of the space is currently vacant. The property was assessed at $840,000, as of 2007, according to the Onondaga County Office of Real Property Tax Services.
Other NYS redevelopment projects completed by S&W include:
- The former Syracuse Plastics facility located on 400 Clinton St., Fayetteville.
- The former Axiohm facility site in Ithaca.
- The Walgreens development site in Kingston.
- The former Griffin Technology
site located on 6132 Victor-Manchester
Rd., Farmington.