Like most people, I was sad to read the news about the closure of the B&M plant in Portland. To say it was a landmark is an understatement and the company will be missed.

The good news is that there is a developer waiting to take over the closed plant immediately to save the area from becoming an eyesore and everyone should be relieved about that.

To give your readers an idea of what the alternative could have been, take a look at the Tobin’s First Prize meat packing plant in Albany N.Y., alongside I-90. It also abutted an interstate, employed 600 people and with its massive “First Prize” sign on top of the building was a landmark to those of us in the area. However, when the company closed and moved out of state in 1981, there was no developer waiting in the wings to take over the building and today the building and adjacent land is still undeveloped; a deteriorating, hulking reminder of what used to be. It’s now at the point where, due to its deterioration, the cost of tearing it down and redeveloping it has become prohibitive so we’re left with driving by the remains of this once proud industry.

Be thankful that the Roux Institute is taking over the building and adjacent land to keep the B&M plant from becoming what the First Prize plant has become for us; an ugly, graffiti-laden, rat-infested nuisance to the neighborhood and something that we try to ignore as we drive by.

Dan Colacino
Delmar, N.Y.

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