Nov 4, 2015 2 min read

The former Prime Plastics building is being primed for rebirth.

“We’re cleaning it out right now and taking out 20 years – or however long it has been around – of debris,” said Tony Rosenberger, president and chief operating officer of Chapman Properties.

Chapman is a real estate development and property management firm based in Leetsdale, along the Ohio River in northern Allegheny County. The company bought the 80,000-square-foot Prime Plastics building, on Detroit Avenue in Washington, out of bankruptcy for $1.8 million in a deal that closed Oct. 27 – and has begun redeveloping it.

Prime Plastics was in business in Washington for about six years, opening in January 2008 and shuttering in the second half of 2013. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Feb. 20, 2013. The company’s assets were later sold.

Rosenberger said the building would likely become a manufacturing facility or a warehouse that could have one tenant or be subdivided to accommodate two or more. The work will cost about $250,000.

With Chapman being in the earliest stages of redevelopment, he could not estimate a time frame for completing work or having a business launch its operations.

“I’d like to have this turned on tomorrow afternoon,” he said, chuckling, “but unfortunately we have to get leasing and (settle a lot of other matters). It will take some time, but we have had a couple of queries.”

Prime Plastics was built on a site that had been a toxic brownfield for more than a decade. A Washington teenager set a fire Feb. 27, 1997, in a building that had been used by Natural Granulating, which recycled tires. It took 10 days for firefighters, working virtually around the clock, to put out the blaze.

That previously was home to the Ball Glass plant.

Chapman Properties also owns a 153-acre tract across from The Meadows Casino, which it has yet to develop – despite owning about half of that property since 1980. It is shaped like an easy chair and extends roughly from Racetrack Road, across from the horse stables, to Tanger Boulevard. The property has about a half-mile of frontage on Racetrack and seven-tenths of a mile of frontage along Tanger Boulevard, past the outlets.

Rosenberger said plans have been formulated, mostly for commercial usage. “We’re moving forward, but not at a fast pace,” he said.