The deal revives plans for a second facility that Pratt, the former Visy Paper company, agreed to build three years ago in exchange for an expanded contract with the city that was to have brought the company an additional 100,000 tons of paper a year.
The paper was to come from Brooklyn, adding to the 140,000 tons the mill already processes from Staten Island and Manhattan, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said during a budget hearing yesterday before the City Council's Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management.
While the city kept its promise -- shifting its lucrative recycling contracts from smaller Brooklyn vendors to Pratt -- the firm hasn't fulfilled its end of the deal, committee Chairman Michael McMahon (D-North Shore) told Doherty during the hearing.
Doherty said that as a result of recent negotiations between the city Economic Development Corporation and Pratt, "I understand that they're amending the agreement, the facility is going to get built, there's going to be jobs and they're going to invest money over there."
When asked what happened to the original plan, he added, "I don't know exactly what went on over there, but there was some hesitation about it."
A source told the Advance the negotiations stretched late into Tuesday night so that a deal could be reached in time for yesterday's hearing.
Under the new deal, only 55,000 tons of Brooklyn's paper recycling, or nearly half of the paper collected in that borough, will be shipped to the Travis mill annually. Doherty said the decrease is due to a dip in total collections.
In exchange, "They have to build the building," said Doherty. "There are some clauses in there to ensure that it's done."
The facility must be built within a year, and Doherty said he believed it would create 125 jobs.
"Pratt is very excited about the commitment both parties have shown," said O'Regan in an e-mailed statement, referring to the Sanitation Department and the Economic Development Corporation. "Details about the project will be forthcoming."
The second facility originally was planned to be a box factory -- using the cardboard processed at the mill next door. An Advance article describing the project two years ago, when Pratt was finalizing the permit applications, reported it would create 200 temporary construction jobs and nearly 30 permanent jobs.
The factory would have been a boon for Australia-based Pratt, letting it bring its cardboard-box manufacturing plant, now at its U.S. headquarters in Georgia, next door to where the cardboard was made on Staten Island.
Although Pratt missed its April 20, 2006, deadline to break ground on the plant -- a deadline agreed to in the 2003 contract -- the Sanitation Department had started sending the additional paper almost immediately.
Last year, Sanitation trucks brought 75,000 tons of Brooklyn's paper to the Travis mill, said Doherty. He estimated that number would fall slightly this year to 60,000 tons, due to a dip in the market.
"Shouldn't they not get that extra paper until that agreement is firmly in hand?" McMahon asked Doherty.
"The company has made large investments," responded Doherty. "They do provide jobs on Staten Island. They will build the facility. The paper is available, so we might as well send it there." Staten Island (New York) Advance