Brightspot Energy LLC moves to buy Carvel Hall

City transfers option to sell former cutlery plant to Delaware LLC

By Richard Crumbacker

Crisfield-Somerset County Times

CRISFIELD — With anticipation that something is coming to the former Carvel Hall property, the City Council voted to replace Spangler Strategic Advisors LLC with Brightspot Energy LLC as the entity given the first option to purchase for $200,000 the long- closed cutlery manufacturing plant.

 

City Solicitor Michael Sullivan said Brightspot consists of “substantially the same principals as Spangler,” adding that this change “is important to them for funding.”

 

At last Wednesday’s City Council meeting Mr. Sullivan endorsed the option transfer, calling it a sign “they are more or less moving forward.”

 

“Generally speaking, if no action was going to be taken on the option that Spangler Strategic Advisors LLC currently holds, they wouldn’t be seeking the assignment,” Mr. Sullivan said.

 

“If you weren’t going to do anything, you would just allow it to sit and perhaps lapse.” “But I think it’s fair to say this is just not paper- pushing on their part.”

 

Spangler LLC, a Maryland limited liability company, was founded and led by Thomas M. Spangler III. Through a company known as CleanBay Renewables, he and his partners proposed to convert chicken manure to methane for the production of electricity at the 23 acre property and find other businesses to also occupy the 70,000 sq. ft. building.

 

In January 2017, the City Council voted against a zoning amendment that stopped the manure plan but three months later approved Spangler to be first in line to buy the property.

 

That purchase option was renewed this past March and the reassignment holds the Delaware limited liability company to the same requirements as Spangler.

 

The property is a brownfield, environmentally compromised by chemicals and heavy metals left behind during cutlery manufacturing. Spangler completed a phase one site assessment with the Maryland Department

of the Environment, and committed to a voluntary cleanup program and remediation plan that meets MDE approval.

 

It was not immediately known, however, if Brightspot would voluntarily continue the cleanup or be compelled to under the purchase agreement with the city.