Versacold trying for new Lynden warehouse

Calvin Bratt
Tribune editor

  LYNDEN — A land sale is in the works, although not finalized, to allow for the construction of a new frozen foods warehouse in west Lynden in time for the local 2010 berry harvest.
  The need of Versacold Cascade Inc. for a new building came up at the Jan. 19 Lynden City Council meeting. Then in the days following, the proposed location off West Main Street changed slightly in order to facilitate a “very tight” time schedule for the project to happen, said Dan Shuler, plant manager.
  “It’s not a done deal yet, but it’s certainly in the advance planning stages,” he said.
  Even after adding about 30 percent more storage capacity with a new First Street building in 2007, Versacold maxed out and had to turn away fruit last summer, Shuler told the council.
  The growth is especially driven by the hundreds of acres of blueberries that have been planted lately in Whatcom County and lower British Columbia — part of a worldwide blueberry boom — that could increase frozen storage needs by 20 percent annually over the next five years, Shuler said.
  Lynden is already a center of North American production of red raspberries for processing — with about 7,000 acres in cultivation — and that harvest begins around July 1.
  Versacold needs to make a decision “within the next couple of weeks” whether the land purchase and building construction can happen yet in 2010, he said.
  The structure would be 200 by 300 feet in size, 60,000 square feet, enabling Versacold-Cascade to take in 20 million more pounds of product. Its current capacity is 60 million.
  On the selling side of the deal would be West Main Street Investment LLC, which owns about 39.4 acres in the 2200 block of West Main. That acreage plus more farther west, under separate ownership as West Lynden Business Park, comprise an area that Lynden has zoned for future industrial and commercial growth.
  Jerry Blankers, a partner in West Main LLC, said Monday that he had seen “nothing in writing yet” and so was reluctant to talk about specifics of a deal.
  In the back-and-forth discussion with Versacold, the partnership is agreeable to a change of location from what was proposed originally, Blankers said.
  At the City Council meeting, the chosen site was some 1,000 feet south of Main. To access it, a street of at least three-quarters width would have to be built in.
  Shifting to a location immediately adjacent to Main means that a street would have to be built a shorter distance, said Duane Huskey, city public works director.
  With the council, West Main Investments also sought a reallocation of latecomer fees owed for utilities put on the property in its original development. But any change requires the agreement of West Lynden Business Park, and representative Dick Vanden Berg said he was “strongly opposed” to giving that. So latecomer fees will remain as they were.
  The council took a pair of 3-1 votes on parts of the requests, with new member Brent Lenssen opposed. Members Gary Bode and Dave Burns were absent, while councilor Tobey Gelder recused himself due to business ties to Blankers.
  The parties involved would do a lot line adjustment to reflect any sale of property.
  “Everything’s up to them now,” Huskey said Monday. “The ball’s back in their court, and they have to make the business decisions.”
  The whole project would not even be up for consideration if it weren’t for a transaction in 2009 affecting all of the Vancouver, B.C.-based Versacold company, Shuler said.
  Operating more than 120 warehouses and distribution centers worldwide, including the facilities in Lynden, Versacold is in the process of being sold by its Icelandic parent company to The Yucaipa Companies LLC of California. The sale was announced at 49 percent interest last June 30, with Yucaipa gaining an option for the remaining 51 percent.
  “That company has resources,” Shuler said. “Otherwise, we would never have gotten this capital (for a Lynden expansion) together.”
  Yucaipa already owns Americold, the largest public refrigerated warehouse operator in the United States. In a letter to employees and customers, Versacold CEO Brent Sugden praised the deal and said there will be continuity of management through the sale process. “We will continue to do business as Versacold,” he said.
  If construction does happen in 2010, the contractor will be Primus Builders of Georgia, specialists in cold storage that Americold has already worked with, Shuler said.
  Versacold in Lynden has 19 employees.
  E-mail Calvin Bratt at editor@lyndentribune.com.