More than four years ago, Leisl Dukhedin-Lalla was walking through the City of Lockport with her longtime partner, Paul M. Beakman, when they came across the operations of Chemical Design.
Learning from Beakman that the Lockport company’s business was related to her own company, Zeton International, she spontaneously decided it would be a good fit, and bought it.
Fast forward, and CDI has outgrown its existing leased facilities at 285 Market St. So Zeton is moving the business two miles away to the opposite side of town, where it plans to build a 16,000-square-foot light-manufacturing and warehouse building on a former agricultural property – which it will share with an elderly couple who still lives in a house on-site.
“It’s a very unique situation,” explained Beakman, who is Zeton’s project manager for the expansion, but is also the Lockport Common Council president. “The property owner is very elderly. He and his wife hope to spend their remaining years at their homestead. There’s more than adequate room to share both our facility and to allow the use of their home.”
Zeton is asking the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency for $732,437 in property, sales and mortgage-recording tax breaks over 15 years for the $5.23 million project. The NCIDA will hold a public hearing on May 30 before considering the application next month.
Zeton US Properties – an affiliate of the parent company – acquired the 7.24-acre property at 115 Oakhurst St. from the couple for $325,000, and has leased the portion containing the 1,152-square-foot house, a 780-square-foot garage and a 1,176-square-foot shed back to them.
“The homeowner is staying put,” said Dukhedin-Lalla, Zeton’s president.
Meanwhile, Zeton plans to construct a headquarters and production facility for CDI that brings together two operations that are currently separate, while enabling the company to accommodate growth in business demand from the hydrogen and clean-energy fields….
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