Eagerly-anticipated West Oakland record manufacturer Second Line Vinyl is at risk of losing all of its equipment to a creditor less than two years after announcing ambitious goals to build a venue and recording studio alongside the city’s first vinyl pressing plant since the 1930s, KQED has learned.
Second Line Vinyl founder and chief executive Zane Howard confirmed that he’s struggled to attract enough investment to bring the facility into action. “We’re having to wind down,” he said. “I would say the business is in jeopardy just as it was ready to begin pressing.”
Lyz Luke, Second Line’s community affairs director, used starker language in an email Saturday to industry contacts. “Our funding has run out and we are going to have to shut down,” she wrote.
The business’ main lender, Stockton pencil manufacturer California Cedar Products, has moved to recover the specialized pressing machinery used as collateral. Howard said an auction of the assets, publicly noticed in a local newspaper Monday, has been postponed until next week while he attempts to negotiate with the lender.
Howard valued the equipment at around $300,000, with an additional $100,000 in installation costs.
“We don’t know what will happen to the equipment,” he said, adding that he hopes to strike a new deal with California Cedar Products.
(KQED has contacted California Cedar Products for comment.)
In late 2017, Howard invited media, investors and music industry figures to the 40,000 square foot Mandela Parkway facility and said that, by the end of the next year, six newly built presses capable of producing a million units annually would be up and running.
The auction notice lists one combination press, extruder and cutter, and related equipment such as a steam boiler and water cooling tower. But the system isn’t operational. (One problem is difficulties working with Pacific Gas & Electric, which is in bankruptcy proceedings, to upgrade the gas line.) Meanwhile, Second Line has been brokering manufacturing deals with other plants.
