HOLYOKE — A New York investor bought the former Holyoke Machine Co. building on Main Street for $1 million and the city’s been told the plan is to use it for cannabis cultivation.
Aaron Vega, Holyoke’s director of planning and development, said he only knows the intended purchaser’s intent because he was informed by the seller, James Sagalyn, former owner of Holyoke Machine.
Albericci filed Tuesday to create a corporation, 514 Main St. LLC, with the address at the old Holyoke Machine building 514 Main St. with the purpose of renting and leasing space, according to papers on file with the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Holyoke Machine Co. closed in 2017 and specialized in equipment for paper mills, but earlier in its life made water wheels and its foundry cast doors for the U.S. Capitol building.
Albericci filed Tuesday to create a corporation, 514 Main St. LLC, with the address at the old Holyoke Machine building 514 Main St., Holyoke, with the purpose of renting and leasing space, according to documents filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth.
The deed was filed July 14 at the Hampden County Registry of Deeds in Springfield.
Brendan Greeley, president of R.J. Greeley Co. which had listed the building for sale on Sagalyn’s behalf, also said Thursday that the buyers told him they want to convert the building into an indoor marijuana growing operation.
It’s a familiar pattern in Holyoke with growing players in the legal recreational medicinal marijuana markets buying up industrial properties. Three major players are already in the city. GTI or Green Thumb Industries of Chicago, has Hampden Papers, TrueLeave of Florida bought a 150-year-old mill building on Canal Street in 2019 this month for $3.2 million with plans to build a 126,000-square-foot growing, processing, testing and retailing operation there. Pleasantrees of Michigan bought 11 Mosher St. for $3 million in November.
Pleasantrees opened a retail store in Easthampton in July.
Vega said the three companies plan $60 million in investments and the city expects to have 1,000 cannabis-growing jobs in a year.
Sagalyn closed Holyoke Machine in 2017 auctioning off its one-of-a-kind industrial equipment including lathes capable of turning paper machine rolls that are up to 70 inches in diameter, 40 feet long and weighing as much as 30 tons. The company also had hydraulic presses 40 feet tall and capable of exerting 3 million pounds of pressure. He put the 43,000-square-foot, 2-acre property on the market in 2017.
But its customers were all paper mills and textile factories, plants that have long mostly disappeared from the Connecticut River Valley. Machine shops still thrive, but they are focused on high tech industries like aerospace, medical devices and defense.
Founded in 1863, Holyoke Machine had been the oldest manufacturer — if not the oldest business, period — in Holyoke.
Greeley said the building was laid out in a way that would make it hard for a new manufacturer.
“Cultivation ultimately drove the purchase price,” he said.
Vega said the city wants to talk with the new owners about some land, a parking lot, on Clemente Street because it’s close to the South Holyoke Homes project and to Carlos Vega Park.
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