Red Bell also announced the resignation of founder and chief executive officer Jim Bell, who has been replaced by Martin F. Spellman, a contractor who received 300,000 stock options in 1995 for work done on the company headquarters and brewery in the Brewerytown section of the city.

Spellman, who is now chairman and president of the company, revealed that Red Bell has accumlated losses of $11.5 million and that the brewery building is scheduled to be sold to a Fort Washington home builder, Westrum Land Development L.L.C., on February 4 for $890,000. Those proceeds would be used to pay back taxes and reduce debt, he said, so that Red Bell could have its brewing license reinstated and begin contract brewing bottled beers at the F.X. Matt & Company brewery in Utica, NY. Red Bell has contract brewed its Philadelphia Lager at the Matt plant in the past, but the beer has unavailable for months.

Bell, who has filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy, founded Red Bell in 1993. The company struggled from the start. Its first beers, contract brewed at The Lion Brewery in Wilkes Barre, were withdrawn from the market due to quality problems, a situation exacerbated by a controversial advertising campaign deemed demeaning to women. 

Red Bell relaunched after acquiring the historic plant on Jefferson Street but had a difficult time getting tap handles in a market which had expanded to include Independence, Yards, Victory and other local microbreweries. Things looked up with the development of a Red Bell brewpub at the First Union Center, but a 1999 deal with a venture capital company to open a downtown brewpub at Reading Terminal Market collapsed into law suits and a joint bankruptcy filing. Red Bell was evicted from the pub it had built and the site became home to the Dock Street Brewpub which is now the Independence Brewpub...but that's another story.

A proposed Red Bell merger with Pittsburgh Brewing Company to effect a hostile takeover of The Lion also failed. An attempt to take the company public last spring fizzled; shares which opened at $5.50 are currently worth pennies. A brewpub planned for State College never got off the ground and the landlord reclaimed the site last summer.

The First Union Center pub is unaffected by the state's actions and remains open. And a brewpub on Main Street in Manayunk, which Bell originally said would open last September, is now on track to open in March, according to Spellman.