In a bid to raise cash, as well as reduce future expenditures, General Motors has begun selling off some of its more diverse assets, ranging from a nine-hole golf course in New Jersey to a toxic waste site in a former metal foundry in Massena, New York.
The former foundry, which once built aluminum cylinder heads for the Corvair, generated a tremendous amount of PCB sludge and hydraulic fluid waste that eventually made its way into the St. Lawrence River.
“It was created by GM dumping hazardous waste on the banks of the river, such that the waste oozed into the water and the land,†said John Privitera, a lawyer for the tribe at McNamee Lochner Titus & Williams PC in Albany, New York, told Bloomberg. “It was picked up by animals and moved up the food chain through fish and into Mohawk women — into their breast milk, into their babies.â€
If GM held onto the property, it would cost about $225 million to clean it up and restock the river – something that a new buyer will now be responsible for doing.
Then there’s the Hyatt Hills Golf Complex in Clark, New Jersey, which the automaker built on the grounds of a former factory in the late 1930s.
The new GM hardly needs to be in the golf course business,†said Tom Wilkinson, GM’s director of news relations, in an email to Bloomberg. “The old GM will be selling a lot of potentially valuable but peripheral property the company accumulated over 100 years, kind of like a big garage sale. You will see some really good real estate deals come out of this for investors and communities.â€
