June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Chrysler LLC’s unsecured creditors, who have claims to company assets still in bankruptcy, may get almost nothing after the remaining legal and other bills are paid, a person familiar with the plan said.

The disposal of seven plants and one office building will take as long as three years, partly because some factories won’t stop work until the end of 2010, said the person, who declined to be identified because the decisions aren’t final. Two of the plants already are closed.

Settling the claims is the last step to wind down Chrysler, which sold most of its holdings to Italy’s Fiat SpA to form Chrysler Group LLC on June 10. Control of the remaining assets of the former Chrysler passed to another new company, Old Carco LLC, which remains in Chapter 11.

“You won’t know what they’re worth until they’re marketed and sold,” said Joseph Hutchinson Jr., national chairman of the bankruptcy practice at law firm Baker Hostetler in Cleveland. “Some of it has no value, at least right now.”

Old Carco will hire marketing companies once a liquidation budget is set, the person said. Creditors will approve the budget after the court decides a schedule for repayment, the person said.

Real estate and factory assets with a book value of about $2.6 billion may fetch 6 percent to 12 percent of that sum when sold, according to two affidavits from Robert Manzo, executive director of Capstone Advisory Group LLC, which Chrysler hired to do a liquidation analysis. That would be $154 million to $308 million.

Wind-Down Costs

Wind-down costs will be $200 million, Manzo estimated, without detailing those expenses. That means that in the worst- case scenario, unsecured creditors would be left with negative $46 million.

Corinne Ball, a lawyer for the Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker, and Adam Rogoff, a lawyer representing unsecured creditors, declined to comment.

Chrysler, with about 54,000 employees, listed assets of $39.3 billion and debt totaling $55.2 billion when it filed for bankruptcy protection on April 30 in New York. The company received $10.5 billion in U.S. and Canadian government financing to help it reorganize.

The U.S. Treasury also may contribute money to Old Carco to help cover environmental-cleanup expenses at plant sites, and land or factories that can’t be sold may be given to municipalities, said the person. A Treasury spokeswoman, Meg Reilly, declined to comment.

Some of Chrysler’s largest creditors, including parts suppliers, were paid off in bankruptcy as part of the company’s government-backed restructuring.

Active, Closed Factories

Old Carco’s active factories are in Detroit, Sterling Heights, Michigan; Fenton, Missouri; Twinsburg, Ohio; and Kenosha, Wisconsin. The closed plants are in Fenton, Missouri, and Newark, Delaware.

Some of those assets will have value because of their real estate or equipment, the person said. For example, the Delaware factory is near a university, and there have been offers for the site for as much as $30 million once the plant is razed and land cleaned up, the person said.

Other sites may have no value, the person said. The facilities in the Detroit area, where land prices are depressed and idle plants are numerous, probably will have to be torn down and the property given to local governments, the person said.

Chrysler Group is paying all of the costs related to running plants held by Old Carco until those factories stop operating. The first scheduled shutdown will be the Missouri pickup truck plant, before Sept. 30.

The last facility to close will be the Sterling Heights sedan plant that makes the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger, which Chrysler Group is discontinuing, the person said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Ramsey in Southfield, Michigan, at mramsey6@bloomberg.net; Tiffany Kary in New York Bankruptcy Court at tkary@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 23, 2009 14:25 EDT