Takeover ties run deep Fight for Gloucester Engineering centers on Harbor …
One of the companies trying to collect debts from Gloucester Engineering by forcing the manufacturer into bankruptcy has ties to the Beverly financier and alleged tax delinquent who’s played a role in a number of local business disasters.
In its long effort to collect several million dollars from Robert Lockwood of Beverly Farms, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue seized $250,000 from Hub Technologies of Middleboro — the same company that last month filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Gloucester Engineering.
According to the state, one of Hub’s bank accounts was controlled by Lockwood, who drew from it to pay personal expenses, such as alimony payments.
The seizure came two months after the state took the liquor license belonging to East Gloucester’s Harbor House restaurant, saying it secretly belonged to Lockwood.
Hub claimed Lockwood was just a consultant and the money belonged to the company, but a judge denied the company’s request for a temporary restraining order against the state.
The connections between Lockwood and Hub don’t end there.
The lawyer who filed the bankruptcy petition, Michael Lane, has also represented two financial companies, Boston Financial and Blackstone Financial, closely connected to Lockwood.
Boston Financial filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and, according documents from federal bankruptcy court, the Chapter 11 plan approved by the court last year gave control of the company to Lockwood.
Also, Lane’s office is at the same Charlestown complex as Boston Financial’s offices, and Lane can be reached through Boston Financial’s main telephone number.
Reached yesterday, Lane said the fact that he represented Hub and Lockwood-related companies did not mean that Lockwood played any part in Hub’s bankruptcy petition.
“I am an attorney and represent numerous clients,” Lane said. “It just worked out that way.”
Lane has said the Hub petition is a standard move by unsecured creditors to increase their chances of being paid by the company.
Lane’s connection to Hub are more than just coincidental.
His father, Stephen Lane, is Hub’s chief executive officer and a long-time associate of Lockwood, according to Christopher Gleeson, the man who ran the Harbor House in East Gloucester for Lockwood and eventually testified against him to the state.
“Stephen Lane has been with Lockwood forever,” Gleeson said yesterday. “He ran one of his companies. They are working together in Middleboro.”
Asked for his side of the story yesterday when reached by phone at his West Street mansion, Lockwood swore at a reporter and hung up.
Gloucester Engineering, meanwhile, owes numerous suppliers and creditors and is currently negotiating with them while looking for a lifeline investor to remain solvent.
Companies facing involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which could result in liquidation, have the option of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which can keep the company together.
Most observers of Gloucester Engineering have assumed the company would file for Chapter 11 before submitting to Chapter 7.
John Sharood, chairman of Gloucester Engineering, this week declined to address the Hub filing, creditors, or any questions related to Lockwood.
Some of the concerns about Lockwood’s involvement with Gloucester Engineering come from his familiarity with the bankruptcy process and involvement with businesses that have come out of Chapter 7.
One North Shore business that came out of Chapter 7 bankruptcy with Lockwood apparently at the helm is the Goat Hill Grille on Rantoul Street in Beverly.
Tim Murphy of Rockport, the former owner of the Grille, went to Lockwood for help when the business was struggling, and accuses Lockwood of secretly forcing the business into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and eventually taking it from him.
“He ended up with the building and the license and I didn’t have the money to fight it,” Murphy said yesterday.
After Murphy was out, the Goat Hill Grill was, on paper, purchased by Conti Coluntino, a former tugboat captain who recently told the state that he paid no rent or mortgage for the business and that operations were run by Blackstone Financial Holdings. Blackstone shares its offices with Boston Financial and is represented by Lane.
In February, the Department of Revenue seized a series of Blackstone Financial bank accounts on the grounds that they actually belonged to Lockwood and he was paying personal expenses from them.
Court documents filed by the state say the bank has so far turned over only $16,252, because that was all that was in them.
Blackstone has filed for a restraining order against the state to prevent the bank account seizure and a ruling has not been made on it yet.
In the last year, the state has collected $17,000 from the sale of the Harbor House liquor license, $250,000 from Hub Technologies and $16,252 from Blackstone, assuming the courts don’t make them give any back.
Those collections bring the total owed by Lockwood down to $2.4 million, still good enough for fifth place on the state’s top 10 list of business tax delinquents.
For years, Lockwood has lived in a gated mansion on West Street in Beverly Farms, frustrating jilted former business partners and tax collectors who have been frustrated by their inability to prove his ownership of assets.
Hub, which designs and manufactures vacuum chambers and pressure vessels, is owed $40,000 by Gloucester Engineering, according to the bankruptcy petition.
Joining Hub Technologies in the Chapter 7 filing — which require at least three — are Plastifar S.A. of the Dominican Republic and Ranor Inc. of Westminster. Both companies are owed more than Hub, with Plastifar claiming $203,500 and Ranor claiming $234,989 in Gloucester Engineering debt.
Attorneys for Plastifar and Ranor could not be reached yesterday.
The deadline for Gloucester Engineering to respond to the bankruptcy petition is next week, and Lane said, although he has not heard any response from the company yet, he expects to soon.
Concerns about Lockwood’s potential interest in Gloucester Engineering may go beyond his bankruptcy work to the fate of several of the business he has been linked to recently.
In Gloucester, the Harbor House still sits vacant and empty on East Main Street with no liquor license and little information of what will happen to it. A lawyer for the mortgage holder of the building said there are no current plans to auction the property off, but there could be soon.
The same mortgage holder, Raymond C. Green, also holds the mortgage on the Goat Hill Grille and Lockwood mansion.
Both of those properties were scheduled to be auctioned off in January, but the auctions were postponed. The Goat Hill Grille and mansion (89 West St.) are now scheduled for auction April 18 by Dean Associates.
Lockwood became briefly linked to another Gloucester bar, the ill-fated Jazzy Joe’s of Main Street, when its owner said was looking to him to finance a rescue. But a potential deal fell through and the business has since been liquidated.
Patrick Anderson can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3455, or .
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