Developer sues to compel clean-up of polluted Walker’s Point complex

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A developer planning to convert three former industrial buildings in Milwaukee into luxury apartments is suing the project’s previous owners over environmental contamination found at the site.

Barclay LLC, an affiliate of Minnesota-based Sherman Associates, filed a lawsuit Tuesday to compel the former owners of the Walker’s Point buildings to cover costs associated with remediating pollution uncovered at the site.

The neighboring buildings — 300 S. Barclay St., 305 S. Barclay St. and 139 E. Oregon St.  — once made up the former Pittsburgh Plate Glass complex and are listed as historic buildings on state and federal registers. A Sherman affiliate in 2017 purchased the buildings for $500,000 with plans to convert them into a 155-unit apartment complex called The Barclay. But construction has yet to get underway.

According to the firm’s suit, an environmental review conducted by the company and overseen by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources found a variety of contaminants at the property from decades of industrial use. Among these pollutants are polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, harmful gasses and various metals such as arsenic and lead.

The suit argues the previous owners dumped pollutants at the property for decades and never bothered to clean them up.

“Barclay intends to redevelop the Properties and return them to productive use for the benefit of the community,” according to the suit. “None of the defendants have taken any action to clean up the contamination that they released into the soil, groundwater, soil vapor and buildings at the properties to date.”

The lawsuit names Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries, Brookfield-based Hydrite Chemical Co. and Missouri-based Lumimove as defendants — in addition to several now-defunct Hydrite affiliates. A spokesperson for Sherman Associates didn’t return a message seeking comment Wednesday. An attorney for Hydrite declined to comment on the lawsuit.

For more than 70 years, the buildings were owned by PPG, as the former Pittsburgh Plate Glass complex, before the company moved its operations to Oak Creek in 1975. The firm, the suit argues, left a significant amount of pollution in the site’s groundwater, soil, soil vapor and buildings from the manufacture of a variety of products, including insecticide, varnish, lacquer and paint.

In the decades after PPG left, the complex was mostly owned by affiliates of Hydrite.

A firm called Wayne Chemical Corp. bought part of the complex and owned the properties through 1985. A related company called Wayne Pigment Group bought the complex in 1985 and used the buildings through at least 2012. Both companies were either under or affiliated with Hydrite, according to the suit, sharing ownership and offices.

Missouri-based Lumimove also owned part of the complex when it purchased a successor to Wayne Pigment Group in 2012.

The lawsuit argues that although each of the companies that owned the properties dumped or disposed of hazardous waste at the site, no firm had notified the Wisconsin DNR or other regulators about an incident for decades.

Citing a memoir from a former Hydrite executive, the lawsuit also accuses the company of spinning off Wayne Chemical Corp. to avoid liability for environmental contamination. It also accuses Hydrite of overseeing Wayne Pigment Group’s environmental compliance.

The lawsuit seeks to compel the former owners to cover costs associated with the property’s clean-up. The developer says it is working with the DNR, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and the city of Milwaukee on a remediation plan for the buildings. But it notes that it may knock some or all of the buildings down if it can’t agree on a plan with regulators.

“Barclay is the only owner of the properties that has made any effort to work towards developing a plan to remediate the Properties and restore them to beneficial use for the community,” according to the suit. Follow @natebeck9