Service Cold Storage plans expansion to nearly double its size
Service Cold Storage, a Stevens Point-based warehouse storage facility for goods needing to be kept in controlled temperatures, recently announced it plans to double its warehouse’s size and requested site plan review approval from the Stevens Point City Plan Commission Monday, June 8.
The Plan Commission recommended approval of the site plan review as the property is properly zoned for the industrial use.
Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza said Service Cold Storage had always planned to expand and left room on their site for building more storage facilities.
“This development is in East Park Commerce Center, the city’s largest state-certified industrial park just east of County Road R behind Land’s End … The current building is about 168,000 square feet and they’re looking at doing a 100,000-square-foot addition to the east,” said Michael Ostrowski, director of Community Development.
“Back in 2013 when we reviewed the site plan initially, they did call that area out as future expansion and hopefully they’ll have yet another expansion beyond this,” Ostrowski said. “Really what they’re going to be doing is mimicking the existing building and lot layout except for one area because of parking.”
He said the change parking layout is to accommodate the high volume of truck traffic.
Les Dobbe, president and CEO of Service Cold Storage, said the expansion is needed to meet growing demand for cold storage.
“Right now in the prepared food space and raw commodity space for frozen food (markets) is growing at about 3 1/2 percent a year and there’s a lag in the frozen accommodation for the food space,” said Dobbe. “I think expansion in the United States is at about a half a percent in the frozen food industry. So, you have a gap (between) the amount in available space and the amount of new food stuffs being produced in that area, particularly in the fast frozen food market – appetizers, ready-to-eat, those types of foods.
“So, as those markets increase we are fortunate to be in a regional production area in Wisconsin and the United States where a lot of that is manufactured,” he said. “As the companies look closer in their deployment in the logistics sector, it becomes more feasible to do distribution and consolidation near point-of-manufacturing than manufacturing here in Wisconsin and sending it to the Chicago-land area.”
Dobbe said Service Cold Storage employs about 30 people and plans to add about 10 more with the expansion.
“We appreciate working with the city, you’ve been a great business partner of ours and we look forward to, hopefully, some company in the business park soon,” Dobbe said.
Dobbe said Service Cold Storage is shooting to have the addition operational by Oct. 15.