By Debra Duncan
Tribune-Review (Greensburg, PA)
Copyright 2006 Tribune Review Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
The bankrupt Arnold Volunteer Ambulance Service Inc. has sold its building to a custom plastics machine shop.
Snyder & Sons Property is buying the building for $300,000.
Bob Snyder, of Oakmont, says FPI Industries Inc. and its 15 to 20 employees will move from West Deer sometime early next year. Snyder is owner of both businesses.
“We need more space,” said Snyder, adding that some work in the building along the Allegheny River needs to be done before the move.
The structure was built by the state as an auto-emissions testing site.
Snyder said the 2-acre site also gives FPI Industries room to expand.
FPI Industries first opened in the 1970s in the Logan’s Ferry Road area of New Kensington. The company later moved to the old West Penn Hat and Cap building and then to its current location at a small industrial park along Route 910 in the Gibsonia section of West Deer, said Snyder.
The firm is a high-end, custom machining shop for plastic parts for industrial machines.
FPI Industries’ customers primarily are industrial and electrical engineering firms, such as Siemens Energy & Automation Inc., which recently took over the former Robicon company in the Westmoreland Business and Research Park in Upper Burrell.
Siemens Energy & Automation announced in April that it would spend $7.2 million to expand the manufacturing facility in the park to meet demand for its electrical-power system controls. The company plans to employ 480 workers at the site when the expansion is completed in 2007.
The sale of the Arnold building will help bankrupt Arnold Volunteer Ambulance Service pay off most of its debts. The for-profit service declared bankruptcy last summer and ceased operations. Arnold Fire Company 1 since has started an ambulance service to serve the city.
Attorney Philip McCalister, who represents the bankrupt ambulance service, praised National City Bank for being patient and allowing the for-profit service time to find a buyer for the building.