Lighting Company Buys Empty Portland Factory Building for $1.25M

A lighting manufacturing company that does business across the United States plans to relocate its corporate headquarters to a Portland factory building that has sat dormant since 2009.

Property records at the Portland Town Clerks office show that Specialty Lighting Group, based out of the Centerbrook section of Essex, completed this week the purchase of the former Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation Building at 74 Pickering St. for $1.25 million from RockTenn CP LLC, the parent company of the now-defunct Smurfit Corporation.

The purchase was finalized on Sept. 28 and recorded on Oct. 1.

The property, which sits in the town’s Brownstone Industrial Park, has been vacant since 2009 when Smurfit-Stone shuttered the plant in October of that year and laid off 100 workers, according to The Middletown Press. The company filed for bankruptcy in early 2009 and, in 2011, Georgia-based RockTenn bought Smurfit-Stone, Montville Patch reported.

Specialty Lighting, which contracts with 14 other corporations, including General Electric, plans on creating a manufacturing base at the Smurfit building as well as a distribution center, records at the Portland Land Use office detailed.

The company was granted a zoning permit earlier this year, records showed.

In an email to East Hampton-Portland Patch, town Economic Development Director Mary Dickerson said Specialty Lighting also has plans for some improvements to the building before it relocates.

She confirmed that the company plans to move its whole Centerbrook operation to Portland and said an official press release would come out before the move happens.

In a story published in The Middletown Press in August, town officials said a company based in Centerbrook was considering the Pickering Street site, but was also considering another property in Clinton as well.

According to the real estate sales information, the building is 173,461 square feet and it sits on 11.45 acres. The wide-open property has 14 loading docks and one drive-in section for cargo, as well as parking for 97 cars and 67 trailers.