OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford A trucker backs his rig into a parking spot Monday at a brownfield leased by Wells as a staging area for its Dunkirk expansion project.

Wells Enterprises is leasing a brownfield at Route 60 and Doughty Street as a staging area for its expansion project.

Vince DeJoy, city of Dunkirk planning and development director, told the Common Council this month that the company is leasing it from an affiliate of the Dunkirk Local Development Corp.

“We’ve been holding it to do an environmental remediation project for the state Department of Environmental Conservation,” he said. “Given the enormity of Wells’ expansion, they needed space for construction staging and parking for their construction workers. You see those giant precast beams there that are being staged there as they are building this $450 million project.”

DeJoy said Wells “has a plan, they’re avoiding all the wetlands, they’ve put in a suitable surface there. They’re basically gonna lease that from the DLDC for the next couple years during construction.”

The site is best known as the former home of the Niagara Motors factory. The building was knocked down in 2000 and the parcel became a vacant, overgrown field. It remained that way until Wells cleared it for the staging area.

According to a DEC remediation plan issued in 2010, the site was used “for various industrial purposes from at least 1919 through the 1970s. Operations ceased in the 1970s and the on-site industrial building was abandoned approximately 10 years later. As a result, the building fell into disrepair and was demolished in the year 2000. The site has been vacant since that time.”