Town Seeking Court Permission to 'Secure' Amerbelle Property

The town is pursuing an court injunction that would allow it to barge into the former Amerbelle Textiles factory in Rockville and take measures to make the complex safer. 

Mayor George Apel emerged from an executive session with the Town Council on Tuesday and made the announcement. He said that by Thursday at the latest, the town will try to get a court order that would allow it to take measures to improve the building's safety. 

The main part of the campus dates back to the Civil War era. 

In October, ownership was transferred from the locally based non-profit Hockanum Industrial Development & Venture Corp. to Bridgepoint Funding Alliance, LLC, which has has a 1 Gold St. address in Hartford, according to a real estate conveyance tax form.

The town had already set aside $75,000 to make the building safe enough to survive a New England winter, but that money was never used because of Bridgepoint's supposed specialty in "adaptive reuse" projects.

Now another $75,000 has been approved by the council to hire a contractor to bring the factory into fire code compliance and secure the perimeter, among other measures, if the court allows.  

Town Administrator John Ward said at the council meeting that Bridgepoint initially performed some of the necessary winterization work, but inspections indicated it began to slack in terms of fire prevention. Apel said a list of safety concerns will be made available. 

Ward said Fire Marshal Ray Walker and local building officials paid several visits to the site over the past several months to make sure Bridgepoint was honoring several orders to make the complex safer. 

Ward said the orders are not being carried out and Apel put the matter on Tuesday's council agenda.

Apel was clear that the town was not pursuing ownership of the property, but wanted legal permission to go onto the site and "secure the property."

In addition to fire safety measures, the perimeter and windows will be secured with fencing and locks, Apel said. 

The town had a scare on Aug. 7 when missing transformer wiring caused a haz-mat situation at Amerbelle.   

A state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesman that day said that sometime recently - and it is impossible to pinpoint exactly when - the factory was broken into and copper wiring was stripped out of four transformers, "breaching" two of the transformers.

The largest transformer leaked 400 to 600 gallons of oil into a catch basin. The transformer was labeled non-PCB, he said.

Another, smaller transformer - labeled PCB - had also been breached and leaked, he said.

The other two transformers did not appear to be breached, he said.
A clogged catch basin saved the day and prevented a spill into the Hockanum River, officials said.