Armstrong to Sell Lancaster Warehouse

Lancaster County, PA, December 27, 2005--Armstrong World Industries announced plans to sell its Landisville, Pa., warehouse to a New Jersey investor for $20.2 million. Thirty years ago this month, with its flooring business booming, Armstrong unveiled plans to build a huge warehouse outside Landisville, according to the Lancaster New Era. Now, facing the opposite business trend, Armstrong plans to sell the Spooky Nook Road building. The sale, disclosed in court papers filed Thursday, is the latest in a series of property sales by Armstrong, as it downsizes its local flooring operations. Agreeing to buy the sprawling 594,000-square-foot warehouse--the size of three Wal-Mart supercenters--is S-J Realty Management Corp., of Teaneck, N.J. Assuming the deal is approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the 67-acre site would be the third Lancaster County property in S-J Realty’s portfolio. The East Hempfield warehouse reflects the rise and fall locally of Armstrong’s flagship business, resilient flooring. Built during flooring’s heyday, the building now is surplus. Armstrong instead will shift its local flooring warehousing and shipping to a now-idle Dillerville Road warehouse, which is being expanded in a $2.7 million venture. The Dillerville Road building went dark early this year when Armstrong stopped making commercial floors at its Lancaster floor plant. However, it will resume operations as a distribution center for residential floors--the only product now made at the Lancaster floor plant--next month. Armstrong expects to vacate the Spooky Nook Road building in March, the same month it hopes to settle on the sale to S-J Realty. The Lancaster-based firm already has won court approval to sell the vacated portion of the floor plant, idle land next to the floor plant, idle land next to the Landisville warehouse and idle land next to its Marietta ceilings plant. While Armstrong sees the Landisville warehouse as unnecessary, S-J Realty is confident that potential tenants will have a different perspective. Sam Kirschenbaum, S-J Realty founder and managing partner, envisions filling the building with one to three tenants who’ll be attracted to having ample space near Route 283. Established about five years ago, S-J Realty owns about five million square feet of industrial space in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, said Kirschenbaum. Locally, its other holdings are the former F.W. Woolworth distribution center in Denver (now occupied by Henry Schein Inc.) and the Arnold Logistics warehouses, also in East Hempfield along Route 283.