Affiliated companies under Winner Holdings Inc. have "streamlined'' their operations and there have been layoffs, but there's no truth to rumors the company is shipwrecked on the financial shoals, said James E. Winner Jr., company chairman.

While Winner said he's preparing to place a number of his downtown Sharon properties for sale, it wasn't due to financial concerns.

All of this comes at a time when Winner is mulling over whether to proceed in creating an industrial park at the former Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant in Sharon.

Buildings that will be put up for sale in downtown Sharon are mostly vacant properties, he said.

"My dream is somebody will come along with a lot more years left in life than I have to pick up the mantle in developing downtown,'' Winner said. "There's no way that's going to happen until you transfer those properties into somebody else's plans.''

Rumors have spread like wildfire that the miniature local empire created by the patriarch of the family enterprise was in a fiscal bind. Winner Holdings is the umbrella company for many of Winner's businesses.

"There's no question the economy is soft,'' Winner said. "Are we doing as well as we were five years ago? Of course not. Are we a profitable company? Yes. I can't think of one that isn't in the whole group.''

More than a dozen workers have been laid off at Winner International over the past month, he said. As marketer of The Club, a vehicle anti-theft device, the Sharon company was the goose that laid the golden egg for Winner. In the '90s millions of clubs were sold worldwide.

Profits enabled Winner to snap up vacant buildings in downtown Sharon and create new businesses from The Winner, a discount women's' department store, to Winner Steel, a steel processor. During the same period he created The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in downtown Sharon and refurbished the former Buhl mansion into a luxury hotel.

Sales of The Club have slackened off, he acknowledged. "It's the same as with any business. When your business scales down you scale down,'' Winner said. "Do we believe it will scale back up again? Absolutely.''

Winner International has expanded its product base and is on the verge of completing a major deal with a Canadian company, he added.

"Did Winner International go through a period ... yeah,'' Winner said. "But we feel comfortable and OK again.''

Winner International will still go public, he said, but the Securities and Exchange Commission nixed the original game plan of the company becoming stock-held through a reverse merger. In this case, a reverse merger is where a privately-held company, like Winner International, is folded into a much smaller existing public company that it already controls. Winner International bought Safety Lock, a Florida company, about a year ago

Last month Winner said he may halt plans for an industrial park at the former Westinghouse plant along Sharpsville Avenue. The Mercer County Industrial Development Authority said Winner hasn't provided dozens pieces of critical information needed to complete an application for a $7 million grant for the project. MCIDA, which is overseeing the application, said grant terms were mandated by the state and the application must be completed by March 7 or Winner could lose the funds.

After last month's MCIDA meeting Winner said he was weary of the project and was on the verge of dropping it. He said he wasn't getting satisfaction from MCIDA. The agency's next meeting was scheduled this afternoon.