The closed Birds Eye plant in Fulton has been sold to a company that plans to open a food-processing facility that will employ 183 people.
A real estate holding company bought the former Birds Eye plant at 607 Phillips St. Thursday, said Jon Sayre, associate broker at Pyramid Brokerage Co. Sayre represented the seller, Bemsa Holdings LLC, a company owned by New Jersey-based Pinnacle Foods.
The sale price has not yet been formally disclosed. However, Fulton officials have said the plant was selling for about $1.2 million. The city recently lowered the tax assessment on the plant from $7.8 million to $1.7 million.
The holding company is named 607 Phillips Street Acquisition LLC. It was created in May specifically for the acquisition of the former Birds Eye plant.
New York is giving the company up to $1 million in Excelsior tax credits in exchange for a commitment to create 183 jobs at the facility.
The jobs should give the economy in Fulton and Oswego County a boost. When Birds Eye closed its vegetable-processing plant in December 2011, it eliminated 280 jobs. Oswego County's 9.5 percent unemployment rate in November was one of the highest in the state.
Sayre said the ownership group does not want to be identified further at this time. He said it will make a formal announcement of its plans for a food-processing center “in a matter of months.”
On Oct. 31, the Oswego County Industrial Development Agency's directors voted 4-1 to approve a payment-in-lieu-of-tax agreement with the holding company for the 287,000-square-foot facility and surrounding 20 acres of land.
The resolution approving the agreement states that the buyer will renovate three existing buildings for use as a “poultry product processing and frozen distribution warehouse facility.”
The agreement granted the buyer financial assistance in the form of exemptions from property taxes, mortgage recording tax and sales taxes. The new owner will make annual payments in lieu of taxes of $30,000 in years 1-5 of the agreement, following by annual payments of $40,000 in years 6-8, $50,000 in years 9-10 and $60,000 in years 11-12.
The former Birds Eye plant in Fulton spans 287,000 square feet.
Fulton Mayor Ronald Woodward Sr. said Sunday the ownership group has worked mostly with the industrial development agency through real estate agents because it is not ready to disclose more about who they are or the name of the food-processing company that will be going into the facility.
“Right now, I have limited knowledge of it, but it’s a done deal,” he said. “Someone’s going in there.”
Woodward said the jobs the new operation will bring to Fulton will help the entire area.
“It will be a big plus for the whole region,” he said. “We need people.”
A food-processing operation has been at the Fulton site since 1902 under a number of owners, including Kraft General Foods, Dean Foods, Agrilink and Birds Eye. Pinnacle Foods Group LLC, a private equity company of The Blackstone Group, acquired the plant when it bought Birds Eye Foods Inc. for $1.3 billion in December 2009.
When it closed the plant, Pinnacle said it was moving the facility's operations to its Darien, Wis., and Waseca, Minn., facilities to be closer to where the vegetables are grown.
1902: Plant opens in Fulton as the Fort Stanwix Canning Co.
1938: Plant begins packaging Birds Eye vegetables
1943: Kraft buys plant, makes improvements
1993: Kraft General Foods agrees to sell Birds Eye vegtable and fruit lines to Dean Foods Co. of Franklin Park, Ill., for $140 million
1998: Agrilink buys the plant
2009: Birds Eye, including the food plant in Fulton, sold to Pinnacle Foods, a private equity company of the Blackstone Group, for $1.3 billion
2011: Pinnacle closes the plant, laying off 280 people, and moves its operations to Darien, Wis. and Waseca, Minn. to be closer to where it grows its vegetables
2013: Plant is purchased by a company that plans to re-open it as a poultry-processing facility employing 183 people
Contact Rick Moriarty at rmoriarty@syracuse.com or (315) 470-3148. Follow him on Twitter @RickMoriartyCNY and on Facebook at rick.moriarty.92.