Real Estate
Brownfields Adventure
In 2004, our client, United States Cold Storage, one of the nation’s largest public refrigerated warehouse companies, satisfied a decades-old longing by acquiring a development site in eastern Pennsylvania with excellent rail and highway access. The catch? The site is located in Bethlehem Commerce Center, a 1600 acre former steel manufacturing location of Bethlehem Steel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When complete, the facility will be the first new operating facility constructed on what is being touted as the nation’s largest Brownfields site. It is an ambitious and exciting project. The client turned to Hangley Aronchick Segal & Pudlin to help with the intricate negotiations. We were proud to assist the client in many ways, including:
- Working with a non-profit developer that didn’t even own the property and had to buy the property from International Steel Group, which, in turn had to purchase the property in the Bethlehem Steel bankruptcy;
- Working with the developer, its lender and one other pre-existing occupant of the tract to develop a new cross-easement scheme to protect the client’s ability to use the property and to eliminate existing easements which could have hampered development;
- Minimizing the risks to the client that the developer would fail to complete the underlying site improvements in time for the warehouse opening;
- Working with environmental counsel in order to negotiate contractual, regulatory and insurance-based solutions to environmental issues.