ALBANY — The architecture firm EYP, one of the largest commercial tenants at Albany Nanotech, has filed for bankruptcy and is being sold off for nearly $68 million to a Las Vegas firm involved in mining bitcoin.
EYP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on April 24, and reported the sale the same day. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the news.
The firm that purchased EYP is called Ault Alliance, Inc. The parent company of Ault Alliance is a company called Bitnile Holdings, which mines for bitcoin and is involved in a variety of other businesses, including biotech ventures.
Shares of Bitnile currently trade at 37 cents. The company lost $24.2 million in 2021 on revenues of $52.4 million.
The sale is a dramatic turn of events for the longtime Albany architecture and engineering firm, which had grown in recent decades into one of the most prominent building design firms in the country for higher education and high-tech industries.
However, a 2020 lawsuit filed by former employees against the company's former CEO, Tom Birdsey, and a New York City investment firm that took an equity stake in EYP in 2011, reveal that the company's business dropped off significantly around 2015 when EYP was looking for a buyer amid a wave of mergers in the architecture sector.
The sale of EYP in 2015 to an architecture firm called Stantec was explored but ultimately did not happen, the lawsuit claims.
The time period also coincided with a major state and federal criminal probe into alleged bid-rigging at Albany Nanotech, which at the time was one of EYP's most important clients. EYP was not accused of wrongdoing, but the lawsuit, which was dismissed earlier this year but is being appealed, claimed that EYP became insolvent amid tens of millions of dollars in debt related to an employee stock-ownership plan.
Under the terms of the sale, Ault Alliance will provide $12 million in financing to EYP to allow it to remain operating and serving its clients. No layoffs are expected for now.
One of the founders of EYP, Eric Yaffee of Slingerlands, died in 2020. Yaffee was born in Albany and studied architecture at Syracuse University before starting Einhorn Yaffee Prescott in 1965.
EYP has designed buildings for universities, governments, hospitals and corporations across the country and locally.
Clients have included Albany Nanotech, General Electric, the College of St. Rose, Regeneron, the University at Albany, Harvard University, Boston College Stanford University, the Department of Energy and many more.
Chapter 11 bankruptcy documents reveal Birdsey, who lives in Bethlehem, is owed $15 million by EYP.
An Albany Nanotech spokesman did not immediately have a comment on EYP and its lease at the ZEN building.
“EYP is a good candidate to use the protections that a Chapter 11 process provides," EYP's interim CEO Kefalari Mason said in a statement.
"Our business is as strong as it has ever been and the advantages for the company are that it allows us to continue doing the work we love while quickly moving through a sale process that further strengthens our financial position," she continued, "allowing us to shape a future that matches our success over the last few years."
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