Corona, CA: Environmental remediation firm buys Business Park property

Building to house equipment manufacturing; airplane plans on hold

Good Earthkeeping Organization, a Corona, Calif.,-based environmental remediation company, has closed a deal on the former Harborside Graphics building in Belfast Business Park.

VillageSoup reported that the building was under contract in February. According to records at Waldo County Registry of Deeds, GEO bought the building on March 24 from the previous owner Ho Holdings Inc.

GEO President and CEO Carol Winell said the company paid $525,000 for the property. City tax records show the building currently assessed at $895,500.

Winell said the plan is to use the building to manufacture air system and refrigeration components used the company's environmental remediation work. A portion of the building will be used for East Coast offices for GEO, said Winell, who added the company is bidding on a large superfund site in Connecticut and recently finished a job in Buffalo, N.Y.

"We're trying to expand our business on the East Coast," she said. "So, this would be a nice home base."

A previous plan to manufacture replicas of mid-20th century light sport airplanes for Riverside, Calif.,-based Luscombe-Silvaire — in which GEO's parent company holds a majority share — is on the back burner but may still happen, Winell said.

"There's a lot around that. We're working on it, but we would be starting the manufacturing of the GEO products prior to any airplane stuff happening," she said.

In December, GEO bought another Belfast property — the former Em Bee Cleaners building on Church Street. Since then, Winell said, the company has been in conversation with several local contractors about renovating the building and several potential clients about renting space within the building.

Initially, GEO expressed an interest in locating its East Coast offices in the former dry cleaning building, but Winell said the business park building already has office space that would allow the administrative side of the business to be in the same place as the manufacturing facility.

"It's going along. You really have to renovate the dry cleaner to put anything in there. We've already begun that process," she said. "[On] the one at the airport business park, we're pretty busy right now. It takes a little while to get geared up."