CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Eyes have been on developer Bill Abruzzino during a dispute over who will pay for a washed out culvert bridge at Elkview’s Crossings Mall, where stores have been unable to reopen and workers have been unable to get to their jobs since June’s flooding.
Abruzzino, who has listed his residence in Georgia for three decades, has invested in shopping malls all over West Virginia and has strong ties to the Fairmont area, where he has been in at least one business partnership with Larry Puccio, former Democratic Party chairman and, most recently, transition team manager for Gov. Jim Justice.
A couple of attempts were made to reach Abruzzino through his cell phone for this story. The first time, after the cell phone rang several times, it went to a message saying a voicemail box had not been set up. The second time, the person who answered said, “He’s not in right now, but I’ll give you a message.” The phone was then handed to a secretary who wrote down contact information.
Earlier this week, the owner of Elkview Crossings Mall filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in West Virginia’s northern district. William Abruzzino of Tara Retail Group was listed as the manager and as the authorized representative in the bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy filing occurred right before a public auction on Crossings Mall was to take place on the Kanawha County Courthouse steps. The company’s estimated assets range between $10 million and $50 million, according to bankruptcy documents.
Tara Retail Group, in the bankruptcy filing, names its main address as 205 Marion Square, Fairmont, in an outdoor shopping center that Abruzzino developed.
That’s the same address — 205 Marion Square — listed for Puccio & York Realty, where Larry Puccio is listed as the manager, according to the business licensing listing at the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office.
Puccio has another incorporated business, Larry Puccio LLC, also listed in the development, although this one is at 420 Marion Square.
Puccio and Abruzzino together have been listed as officers from 2009 to the present in A & P LLC, a Fairmont-based real estate, rental and leasing company. That business is also licensed with the Secretary of State’s office. A & P LLC also has a 205 Marion Square address.
Reached on his cell phone Thursday afternoon, Puccio acknowledged that he has had a business relationship with Abruzzino in the past, but said there is no current relationship and that he is not an investor in Crossings Mall.
“I’ve never been an investor in that mall, never been an owner, never been an investor,” Puccio said. “I just think people think, ‘Oh well, because they know each other…’ When I drive by I see maybe Kmart but I don’t know what stores are in that mall. I used to be in some business with him but not at this time. That’s probably where that got started.”
Abruzzino and Tara Retail Group have been at the center of conflict for the past half-year after a culvert bridge leading to Crossings Mall in Elkview washed out in June’s statewide flooding.
Since the June flood, more than 500 plaza employees have lost their jobs and hundreds more cannot get to the mall for shopping needs. The plaza has been closed since the bridge collapsed.
Local officials have been in a battle over who should replace the bridge. Last month, a federal judge put the property into receivership to get the bridge rebuilt. U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston also ordered U.S. Bank, the property mortgage holder, to pay for the bridge. The bank holds a $13 million note on the property.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper has been outspoken in his belief that Abruzzino and Tara Retail Group should be the ones to pay for the bridge to Crossings Mall. Carper said he is considering an attempt to sign on Kanawha County as a creditor in the bankruptcy.
“What they owe us is getting people back to work,” he said. “It’s no wonder people lost confidence of every facet from business to government when you see something like this.”
He said that early on Abruzzino appeared to be trying to rectify the situation with the washed out bridge.
“I don’t know if he went dark as much as I realized to talk to him is waste of everybody’s time,” Carper said. “He went out, hired an engineer, did core samples; it just didn’t look like this is what was going to happen.”
Carper has had plenty of dealings with Abruzzino over the years.
“He is quite an interesting character,” Carper said. “He has been involved in malls and shopping malls all over the state. Kind of a wildcat developer-type character.”
A 1987 story in the Charleston Daily Mail described the announcement that Abruzzino and his company planned to build Crossings Mall in Elkview. It noted that Abruzzino was already the owner of at least five other shopping centers in West Virginia. Among them were Fayette Square in Oak Hill, Merchants Walk in Summersville and the Marketplace in Weston, all built within 18 months of each other.
Abruzzino, in his role as managing partner of Plaza Management, ran afoul of Kanawha County officials in 2010 when the county was cracking down on hotels it accused of collecting business and occupation taxes and then keeping the money for themselves.
That dispute also exemplified confusion about what Abruzzino’s local business interests are.
The county’s action followed a lawsuit filed by Sheriff Mike Rutherford’s office against Country Inn & Suites in Elkview. The sheriff’s complaint alleged the hotel owed the county at least $19,152.01 in personal property taxes. The defendant in the suit was Florida-based Plaza Management LLC, which was doing business as Country Inn and Suites, according to the complaint.
At the time, Abruzzino told the Charleston Daily Mail that the company did not own Country Inn and Suites. In fact, he told a reporter at the time, the company doesn’t own anything in Kanawha County. When asked for that story if he would name the actual owner of the property, Abruzzino said, “It’s not Plaza Management.”
But in an e-mail to Carper at the time, Chief Tax Deputy Allen Bleigh said that Abruzzino visited his office in person just a day after making those comments to pay the delinquent occupancy taxes in full. “Please be advised that Mr. Abruzzino and a member of his staff came to my office this morning and paid the Hotel/Motel tax for March 2010 through July 2010 totaling $39,563.47,” Bleigh wrote in the e-mail.
“Mr. Abruzzino explained that their business has experienced a cash flow issue due to a bad winter and lagging economy; that is why they were not able to pay the taxes owed.”
Bleigh said in an interview with the Daily Mail at the time that, despite Abruzzino’s previous comments, he obviously, in some capacity was the hotel’s owner, although he might not have owned it through that particular company. “I think there are some semantics going on there,” Bleigh told the newspaper.
One of the other shopping malls owned by Abruzzino and his development companies, Marion Square, is the Fairmont location of a Food Lion, a Busy Beaver home improvement store and a Division of Motor Vehicles office.
The Marion Square property was the subject of a 1983 court dispute. Appellee Farmers and Merchants Bank of Morgantown sued Bill and Rebecca Abruzzino for principal and interest due on a promissory note for $162,973.75 that had been loaned to pay off debt on the shopping center. The loan was made in 1975. The Abruzzinos moved to the Atlanta area in 1979.
The case was brought in Georgia, the Abruzzinos lost, and they appealed, in part, on the grounds that West Virginia law should have applied. The Court of Appeals of Georgia disagreed and affirmed the lower court’s decision against the Abruzzinos.
Puccio, who has sometimes been in business with the Abruzzinos, began his career in the Fairmont area as a commercial and residential real estate appraiser.
“I first started getting interested in politics as a businessman,” Puccio said in a recent profile, “West Virginia’s kingmaker Larry Puccio has a rich political history,” in the State Journal business newspaper. “I realized that any change that occurs in the state happens through our elected officials.”
He began his political life through connections with Joe Manchin, a fellow Fairmont native and now U.S. Senator, and continued to be politically active by running billionaire Democrat Jim Justice’s successful run for governor in 2016.
Puccio served as chief of staff when Manchin was the secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. When Manchin became governor in 2005, Puccio remained on board as chief of staff for that office.
In late 2010, Puccio announced he would resign from the governor’s office. Less than a week later, he transitioned to become the main lobbyist for Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races, The Greenbrier resort and others. He got an employment exemption from the state Ethics Commission to allow him to take on the lobbying work. Without it, he would have had to have waited for a year after leaving government employment.
Six months later, in June 2010, Puccio was elected to serve as the state Democratic Party chairman. Puccio took over as party chairman from lawyer and accountant Nick Casey, who had served as party chairman since 2004. Casey had been recommended by Democratic Sens. Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller to serve as a federal judge but eventually did not get the nomination. Casey now serves as Justice’s chief of staff.
In early 2015, Puccio resigned as Democratic Party chairman, just a few months after Republicans gained majorities in both houses of West Virginia’s Legislature and won all three of the state’s congressional seats. He announced plans to lead Manchin’s Country Roads PAC.
By May 2015, Puccio was among those flanking Jim Justice, owner of The Greenbrier, as Justice filed his pre-candidacy papers to run for governor. When Justice won the general election last November, Puccio was named to lead the governor’s transition team.
Last week, one day after Justice’s inauguration, Puccio again registered as a lobbyist for several clients, including The Greenbrier and Southern Coal Corp., which Justice owns. His other listed clients are Frontier Communications, the West Virginia Press Association, First Energy Service Company, WV United Health Systems, Pallottine Health Services and ISelectMD.
Puccio is a trusted advisor to a U.S. senator and to the governor. And his business relationship with Abruzzino goes way back. But Puccio said he is no better equipped to answer how the bridge should be fixed and who should pay for it than anyone else who has read about the situation.
“I don’t know because I don’t know the details. I don’t know who owns that land. I don’t know what the agreement is with the tenant,” he said. “ For me to say something would be uneducated because I really don’t know the details. Abruzzino and I aren’t close for me to ask what’s going on with that. If I used to own a percentage of it, I’d know a lot more about it.
“If I was a partner ever or if I knew the details I would give you a opinion. I don’t know anything about the doggone place other than the bridge went out and everyone’s talking about it and everyone wants it to be put back in.”