dhiggins@poststar.com
MOREAU - A adolescent absolute acreage developer has purchased the above Chase Bag architecture on Hudson Falls Road from bounded absolute acreage mogul Richard Emerson.
The acquirement makes Eric Unkauf, 32, article of an actionable baron of the bounded business incubator. The building, a 250,000-square-foot above bag branch on 30 acres, is the home to about three dozen baby businesses that get pay-one-price account for utilities, snow abatement and taxes for lower-than-usual rent.
It will be the additional such business incubator for Unkauf, who owns the architecture on Lawrence Street in Glens Falls accepted as the Troy Shirt Factory. That architecture is home to a woodworker, beheld artists, a blacksmith and music studio, amid others.
"I had been arcade around," Unkauf said Tuesday. "Troy Shirt will be abounding by aboriginal abutting year."
Emerson purchased the Chase Bag architecture 14 years ago as arch of the aggregation Epic Ventures for about $1.2 million. Though neither man would acknowledge the best contempo affairs price, Emerson said he did not advertise the architecture at a loss. The Saratoga County clerk's appointment said the affairs bulk was aloof over $846,000, but Emerson said that bulk was incorrect. He didn't elaborate.
The accepted tenants at the Chase Bag architecture accommodate a mix of businesses that are added automated than at the Troy Shirt building. They accommodate MC Environmental, a discharge remediation company, and Bates Industries, which makes attention medical components.
Saratoga Economic Development Corp. Senior Vice President Jack Kelley hailed Emerson as "a visionary," and said he was assured in Unkauf's buying of the building.
"Epic Ventures is a case abstraction in what to do with a medium- to small-sized branch building. Absolutely remarkable," Kelley said.
"It's been abundantly acknowledged and a amazing ability in the tri-county activity area. Dick Emerson is a abstracted himself who saw accomplished the dust and cobwebs a animated jewel," he said.
Emerson said he awash the crumbling architecture - genitalia of it are 100 years old - to Unkauf, in allotment because it was difficult to accumulate up with repairs.
He acclaimed that Unkauf, who is 24 years adolescent than Emerson, "is active and ambitious. I'm accepting older."
But Emerson additionally said the accord came as article of a abruptness to him.
"If you had asked me three weeks ago if this was activity to happen, again I would accept told you there is a beneath than a 50 percent chance," he said.
Emerson is additionally the buyer of Union Square, the architecture at the western access of the burghal of Glens Falls. He said tenants there would acceptable not be afflicted by the Chase Bag accord in the accountable future.
Unkauf, who additionally owns KMA, a apparatus boutique on Maple Street in Glens Falls, will move that business to his new architecture in the advancing months, he said. That adventure will booty up about 15,000 aboveboard feet, abrogation about 30,000 aboveboard anxiety vacant. He said that he foresees no changes with the accepted tenants. Perhaps to assure them, the association Unkauf formed to complete the transaction was called Epic Holdings.
"I had annihilation like a bold plan that said I'm activity to go out and body a business incubator," Unkauf said of his business plan.
At the Troy Shirt architecture and apparently at his new building, he break up ample bare branch amplitude into abate spaces for audience by putting up walls, generally for startup businesses that use aloof a few thousand aboveboard feet.
"It seems to be a accustomed way to hire space. It's aloof my way of bartering article that's bare in the marketplace. If bodies were attractive for 50,000 aboveboard anxiety at a time, I'd be accomplishing that instead."
