More than a year after winning approval to acquire a 183,000-square-foot building in Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood, cabinet and countertop retailer Express Kitchens has not yet completed the purchase.
However, Max Kothari, founder and CEO of the Hartford-based company, said Thursday that the deal should be done soon.
“We should be able to finish the transaction in the next two months,” Kothari said in an interview.
He said the purchase was delayed — “big time” — by the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck several months after Express Kitchens won city council approval to purchase the property through the acquisition of $1.6 million worth of city tax liens at a discounted price of $639,766.
“Anything involving the city, the state, attorneys, even myself, was delayed due to COVID,” Kothari said, adding that he contracted the novel coronavirus and has since recovered. “You just have to give people room right now. I’m assuming everyone has become a lot more patient.”
He said there’s still some environmental reporting to complete ahead of the purchase of the 183,000-square-foot property, which housed Veeder-Root until the 1980s and today contains several tenants, including nonprofit Our Piece of the Pie.
“We are heading in the right direction and working through the issues,” he said.
The Veeder sale wasn’t the pandemic’s only impact on Express Kitchens, which employs upwards of 150 people.
In 2019, the company announced plans to open eight new retail locations in Greater Boston during 2020.
Express Kitchens had started to roll that plan out just before the pandemic struck, debuting showrooms in Lynn and Peabody last January and February, respectively.
Express Kitchens soon had no choice but to close those showrooms, Kothari said.
“We had to retreat,” he said. “Sales just disappeared.”
Kothari, who also chairs the board of the Hartford Chamber of Commerce, said he’s feeling a bit more optimistic of late.
Perhaps due to the ongoing rollout of vaccines, business has been picking up, particularly for Express Kitchen’s home improvement product offerings.
“I think the market is coming back pretty well,” he said.
