Old Industrial Properties
Seeing Productive Use
By M. D. Drysdale

Don Lewis, owner of Mid-Vermont Molding, shows off one of the myriad of high-tech plastic components that his business manufactures in the Beanville Road facility. (Herald / Tim Calabro)

Two of Randolph’s former industrial properties, after sitting unused or almost unused for 15 years, are occupied again, supporting three local manufacturers who say their future looks bright.

Despite the steady decline of manufacturing in the overall Vermont economy, small to mid-sized businesses do continue to fill a niche and flourish. That trend is one of the strengths of Randolph’s economy, as identified this summer by Jeremy Ingpen, former executive director of the Randolph Area Community Development Corp.

The new activity in these two manufacturing buildings appears to be continuing evidence of that encouraging trend.

One of the properties is known by old-timers as the Magalsky Building on Route 12 opposite South End Auto, which later in its life was the home of the innovative mold-making machine shop operated by G. W. Plastics. That 10,000 square foot building has now been purchased by Ultramotive of Bethel and is about to receive a new look.

The second property is the former home of New England Precision, Inc., formerly operated by John Threlkeld, which produced blank keys by the millions for U.S. automakers. The building is still owned by David Threlkeld of Arizona.

Suspected creosote pollution kept the property from being saleable until recently. Threlkeld is still steaming about the 20 years that the property had a cloud over it because of what he terms an obstructive state bureaucracy.

The initial estimate for the clean-up was $3 million, but the problem was eventually solved with the help of a $30,000 special grant from the legislature.

Now two of the buildings are being leased by Aadco of Randolph Center whose owner, Robert Marchione, said he hopes to buy the property. The third building at the site houses a small but thriving plastic injection molding business, Mid-Vermont Molding, a family operation headed by Don Lewis.

Ultramotive

Buys Bldg.

Ultramotive proprietor Chris Scheindel of Randolph says the South Main Street building he bought from G. W. Plastics is "a beautiful building, with good lighting." He promises that the somewhat shabby exterior will soon reflect that statement.

"We’ll put in new doors and windows, spruce it up," he told The Herald.

"I care what it looks like—right on the road."

He also hopes to fix up a good-sized shed in the gully behind the building—which will be a tall order as the roof has collapsed.

Ultramotive has been one of the White River Valley’s success stories. Scheindel started it in 1973 near the railroad in Bethel, specializing in making all sorts of aerosol containers. When the gasses used in aerosol cans came under fire for causing problems with the earth’s ozone layer, Ultramotive got ahead of the curve, developing some of the first alternative propellants.

For now, Scheindel said, the Randolph building will be used mostly for storage, but he wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of using some of it for more manufacturing.

The company employs 40 people and is exceptionally busy, he said, as workers are getting lots of overtime.

"We worked hard to get where we are," he said. "And I’m enjoying it, too."

Aadco Again

Expanding

The Threlkeld property on Beanville road is also a very substantial and useful property, now that it has obtained a clean slate of environmental health.

It’s a natural space for the growing Aadco Co. business, said Aadco’s Marchione.

Aadco now operates out of its own building next to ClearSource, which Marchione built in 1999. Since then, his sales have tripled, and he’s expanded in 2000 and 2003.

The buildings on Beanville Road will house the company’s distribution center, he said, thus freeing up needed space for manufacturing in the main building.

He said he expects to purchase it and is just waiting for a final environmental clearance document from the state.

Threlkeld, however, would confirm only that "negotiations are in process."

That building became famous locally when it accrued the biggest delinquent tax bill in Randolph history—$82,000 in 2005. That was during the period that regulators declared the site polluted, and Threlkeld refused to pay taxes on a property that was apparently worthless. For the same reason, the town was reluctant to take it over. At about the time the environmental problems were straightened out, the mortgage holder paid off the tax bill in September of 2005.

Now it appears the building is once again to be a productive part of Randolph’s economy.

Aadco has been another little-recognized success story. It began by manufacturing specialized garments for the medical industry, such as lead shields for X-ray attendants. It has added an important speciatly dealing in suspension systems.

Aadco has had great success in manufactuing various forms of a counterbalanced apparatus that can be suspended from ceilings, and that equipment can be mounted on. That way, the equipment doesn’t take up floor space, Marchione explained. Most recently, the company has developed a line of disposable sterile drapes.

Aadco employs about 50 people, including 38 in Randolph several salesmen scattered across the country, and a mini-plant in Hong Cong employing three people.

Marchione expects to grow. He’s doing substantial business in several Asian countries and the company is issuing its first Chinese language catalogue.

The only downside to his increasing Asian business, he noted, is that he has to get up at 5 a.m. to make telephone calls to Hong Kong, where it is 5 p.m. the next day.

Family Firm

Doing Well

One of the Threlkeld buildings has been occupied for five years by Mid Vermont Molding, a plastics molding firm run by a South Royalton firm that also hopes to grow in the future.

It’s a family company, whose proprietor, Don Lewis, is joined by his wife Linda, son Jason and daughter Tessa, as well as a few non-family employees.

Trained as a mold-maker for 20 years at G.W. Plastics, Lewis struck out on his own five years ago and has been succesful. His niche, he says, is affordability, plus lots of experience with all kinds of plastic molding.

"We can run anything," he explained this week. The company makes "all kinds of things" for about 25 clients, half of which are in-state and half out-of-state. A normal run is 500-1000 items, sometimes as many as 300,000 parts come off a production line.

Lewis takes a flexible piece of plastic out of one of the baskets. It’s a connector for the top of one of Ultramotive’s aerosol cans. It needs to be flexible so the button can move back and forth a bit.

Then from another machine he pulls a hard plastic that wil provide the housing for electronics from Minute Man Controls in Burlington.

Lewis is satisfied with Mid-Vermont’s smallish size, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were some growth in its future.

"Jason’s young and he’s got all the fire," he said. "He’s got some ideas, and they’re panning out for him."