Mack pleads guilty, town taking reins of Forster Mill project

WILTON – On April 7, 2011, approximately 40 town officials and curious residents packed into the basement of the town office for the bi-monthly selectman’s meeting. The night’s agenda was headlined by what more than one resident referred to at the time as a “miracle:” someone wanted to demolish the Forster Manufacturing Co. mill.

Adam Mack, owner of the 110-year-old building at 515 Depot Street, appeared with full-length blueprints of the 235,000 square foot mill, representatives of Downeast Construction Co., and an ambitious ‘deconstruction’ cycle that would be funded through salvageable material.

“There won’t be anything left one year from now,” Mack said of the site.

Approximately four years later, Mack, now, 39, of Portland, pleaded guilty to federal counts of aiding and abetting visa and marriage fraud and making false statements to a government agency in U.S. District Court in Portland. The convictions, which court documents indicate relate to an attempt to acquire visas for two women, carry maximum sentences of 5 and 10 years and $250,000 fines, raising the possibility that Mack may be returning to federal jail for the second time in 3 years.

Wilton, meanwhile, has been in contact with state agencies and grant programs, seeking to complete what a 4-year-old miracle could not.

The mill was originally the home of the Wilton Woolen Company which, as local historian Paul H. Mills notes in his 2014 article on the “zombie” real estate phenomenon, was in its heyday the primary supplier of fabric for General Motors. Forster Manufacturing would purchase the building in the 1960s, producing mops, brooms, clothespins and croquet sets while employing 1,000 people a day. Forster would eventually be bought out by another company and move west, with plastic cutlery-producing Jarden’s sliding into place for a few years before vacating the aging building for new facilities in Wilton.

Mack would buy the property through his company, Wilton Recycling LLC, and spend approximately 5 unsuccessful years trying to sell it, reducing his price to as low as $215,000. However, in 2010, Wilton voters approved an amendment to the zoning ordinance, changing the Forster property from Industrial to Downtown Village. With new development opportunities available, Mack said at the 2011 meeting, he had decided to attempt to demolish the property.

At the time, among both selectmen and residents attending the meeting, support for Mack’s plan was high. The Wilton Selectboard was at that point grappling with three large, vacant buildings, despite owning only one of them: the Forster mill, the Route 2 tannery building and the old primary school on School Street. While only the school was owned by the town, having been returned by MSAD 9, all three buildings represented fire and public safety risks, as well as eyesores.

A permit to raze the structure was eventually granted by the town. Demolition would begin in April 2011, with about 10 people employed by Downeast Construction removing a south-facing wall and internal material.

Then, on July 18, a resident called 9-1-1 after seeing smoke rise from the demolition site. Wilton Fire Rescue and Wilton Police Department personnel responded, finding a third-floor wall on fire and a construction crew attempting to extinguish the blaze. The cause of the fire was determined to be a welder casting sparks.

The next day, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration received test results taken previously from the site that showed unhealthy levels of airborne asbestos, which has been tied to several types of cancers, especially lung cancer.

The testing had been conducted unrelated to the fire, due to complaints made to OSHA weeks earlier by construction workers. Downeast Construction was immediately ordered out of the site, and tests were ordered for firefighters and one police officer that responded to the fire.

The site would later be termed one of the “worst asbestos cases” the DEP’s Lead and Asbestos Hazard Prevention Program staff had ever seen, according to DEP officials. A new company, Abatement Professionals, was hired by Mack and began to remove asbestos from the site. In some cases, DEP noted, it appeared that the insulation had simply been torn away to get to metal pipes, which were removed and sold by Downeast Construction.

The abatement was deemed complete and the building cleared for further demolition in September 2012. By that time, Downeast Construction owner Ryan Blyther was in jail, serving a 6-month sentence after a jury convicted him of stealing $50,000 from American Legion Post 56 in York. Interviewed on Sept. 19, Mack said he intended to move ahead with the mill’s demolition.

“I don’t have exact time line, but we’re working on a plan to get it as safely and as cost effectively as possible to get it done,” Mack said. “We’re going to move ahead with it,” he added.

However, Mack would plead guilty to a federal equity skimming charge on October 10, 2012, admitting to misapplying $384,000 in loans subsidized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program. That money was used to pay unrelated expenses for other properties in which he and his family had an interest. On April 2013, Mack was sentenced to six months in prison, three years of supervised release and a restitution payment of $384,000.

Leery to take ownership of the property, the town arranged for foreclosure waivers to be issued in 2012 and 2013 at special town meetings, preventing the town from automatically acquiring the mill. Wilton did not have the funds to attempt a demolition, the cost of which was expected to approach $300,000, and town officials and residents expressed concerns about the liability associated with the partially-demolished mill.

The mood of the Selectboard began to shift in the latter half of 2013, after a representative of Mack informed the board that he had approximately one-tenth of the necessary funds to restart demolition available. Additionally, a company that surveyed the mill for Mack found that the large amounts of valuable metal that might have financed the project had been removed by Downeast Construction. Previous DEP reports indicated that the value of the removed metal might have been high as $250,000.

The board moved to declare the mill a “dangerous building” under state law, with an eye toward a court-mandated demolition. A lawsuit was filed by Wilton against Wilton Recycling LLC in Franklin County Superior Court.

“The threat of collapse and fire danger, in addition to the fact that the building is unsecured, therefore accessible to trespassers, poses a serious threat to public health, safety and welfare,” the document alleged.

Furthermore, in advance of a third special town meeting in March 2014, some selectmen and residents began openly wondering if the town would end up paying for the demolition, one way or another, and should simply claim the property and move forward with the project.

In March 18, 2014, hours before residents were to debate the mill site’s future at the special town meeting, Mack paid $8,469 in back taxes on behalf of Wilton Recycling LLC. That took the property out of the foreclosure process and resulted in a pretty quick town meeting. It also left Wilton’s lawsuit as the town’s only real option.

“From what I understand,” Town Manager Rhonda Irish told residents on March 18, 2014, “a case like this is not a very quick-moving case.”

Mediation between the town and Mack, generally a precursor to legal action, began in late 2014. However, Mack filed for personal bankruptcy in December 2014, resulting in that process coming to an abrupt end.

Last month, the town foreclosed on Forster mill property. Mack, facing two counts of aiding and abetting visa fraud, one count of aiding and abetting, and two counts of making false statements to a government agency, would plead guilty to all charges two weeks later. The charges stem from an attempt to assist two women seeking to become permanent residents.

Wilton is again seeking to work with the DEP to get the property assessed for a potential demolition and cleanup, as it did with the tannery property. An application to the DEP’s Brownfields program has already been accepted, clearing the way for a Phase I assessment and Hazardous Waste Material inventory to begin by late May or early June.

The assessment will seek chart the building’s historical uses and fill in data gaps to analyze the potential for contamination at the site. Given the building’s industrial background, a Phase II assessment will likely be recommended. That would consist of the collection of samples from the site.

The inventory will quantify hazardous elements within the building: asbestos, possibly in the roof and almost certainly in the sealed-off boiler room which was not abated in 2012, as well as lead windows and PVC. The inventory will also develop an estimate to remove remaining hazardous material.

“It’s very important that we do this,” Irish said Tuesday, “and not just jump ahead and take something down.”

The town is seeking demolition quotes, including the cost of taking down the freestanding, south-facing wall. The town is also looking to include $100,000 of funding earmarked for the demolition in a Community Development Block Grant application being filed with the Department of Economic & Community Development.