Hawthorne paint factory empty since 1995 is due for redevelopment, officials say
HAWTHORNE — The site of a former paint factory has been pegged for potential redevelopment, but officials said the chemical hazards that remain there need to be cleaned up.
Officials said the goal for the site, abandoned nearly three decades ago, is to get it back on the tax roll and to return it to productive use.
The Borough Council took a pivotal step toward that end, passing a resolution to declare the site at 55 Schoon Ave. an area in need of redevelopment.
Now the borough planner will prepare a redevelopment plan to establish what should be built there before the council considers an ordinance to formally adopt it.
The plan will most likely call for light industrial use of the 2.4-acre tract, officials said.
Borough Attorney Michael Pasquale said the contaminated site is a perfect candidate for redevelopment. He called it an “eyesore in the neighborhood.”
“This particular property checks every box,” Pasquale said. “It’s an outlier — it doesn’t belong there.”
The property was abandoned by Pyrolac Corp., which made industrial coatings, lacquers and paints. It abuts the railroad to the west, a plastics manufacturing plant to the north and homes on Passaic Avenue to the east.
As a result of so many years of inactivity, the property has been reclaimed by nature.
A report by Westwood-based Burgis Associates Inc., the borough planner, said the old buildings there are in “such a severe state of disrepair” that the site is “hazardous to the public interest.”
Story continues below map.
The contamination will require monitoring and remediation, the report said. “This poses a threat to the public health and significantly adds to the burden of costs associated with redeveloping the Study Area property,” it noted.
Pyrolac, formerly known as Vulcan Lacquer & Coatings Co. Inc., occupied the property for 29 years.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 1994, and it ceased operations less than a year later.
K-12 DISTRICT: Hawthorne High School facade partially collapses and damages cars
An investigation of the property by the Environmental Protection Agency in November 1996 determined that leaking storage tanks polluted the aquifer and soil with acetone, alkyd resin, butanol, isopropyl alcohol and toluene, among other contaminants.
The site was under scrutiny for years. In July 1985, the state Department of Environmental Protection cited Pyrolac for generating hazardous waste without a permit. The agency later found that the company violated the Water Pollution Control Act.
Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: devencentis@northjersey.com
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Hawthorne NJ empty paint factory ripe for redevelopment
