Cold, hard cash
Refrigerated warehouse project will bring $20 million, 100 permanent jobs to area
Lionchase Holdings Inc., has agreed to build a 200,000-square foot cold storage facility on TexAmericas Center, an industrial park located adjacent to Red River Army Depot and west of Texarkana.
The project is expected to create a minimum of 100 permanent, full-time jobs and a bring a minimum of $20 million investment, TexAmericas officials announced Thursday.
“This cold storage project will result in good jobs for the greater Texarkana region,” said Boyd Sartin, chairman of the (TexAmericas) Board of Directors, “TexAmericas Center
is remaining focused on the organization’s vision to create 12,000 jobs for this region, and we are excited to take another big step towards this goal.”
The board approved an agreement with Lionchase Holdings Inc., a privatelyasset management firm, at its February meeting.
Lionchase Holdings’ proposal includes a state-of-theart cold storage facility with Frigitek and energy-saving technologies. Building features include 55-foot ceilings, more than 135,000 square feet of refrigeration and freezer floor space, dry storage, blast freezing, pre-cooling and 3PL processing and packaging services.
The facility will service the public and be professionally managed by cold storage industry specialists.
“The exciting element of this cold storage project is the spurred interest it will create among other linked industries within the food processing cluster who need access to cold storage supply chain services,” said Scott Norton, executive director/ for TexAmericas Center. “We anticipate that this development will attract additional leads from food processors, manufacturers and distributors to locate to the greater Texarkana region.”
Ken Brown, managing partner of Lionchase Holdings, toured the TexAmericas Center property in November and chose a site on the TexAmericas East Campus at 650 Lamar St. The project and site visit was a direct result of Eric Voyles, executive vice president and chief economic development officer for TexAmericas Center, marketing the property at the 2017 business facilities executive conference, LiveXchange.
“We have really focused on increasing our marketing efforts during the past year; As a result, we have seen an increase in leads and site visits to the footprint. Our next step in moving this project forward will be to market the available cold storage space to businesses and highlight our concept for a 500 Acre TexAmericas Center Food Processing Park.” Voyles said.
Construction for the cold storage facility is slated to start this fall with a planned completion timeline of 18 months for the new facility. Operations are expected to begin in December of 2019, according to an official press release.
Lionchase will be represented by Chris Copenhaver with Cushman and Wakefield, a leading global real estate services firm. Mr. Copenhaver, who is the North American Co-Lead for the Food & Beverage Advisory Practice Group within the Logistics & Industrial Services Platform of Cushman & Wakefield, has begun marketing efforts to pre-lease the cold storage facility.
Interested companies should contact Mr. Copenhaver directly at the Atlanta office. Additionally, TexAmericas Center will initiate an email campaign focused on a targeted list of companies and other location advisers within the cold storage supply chain and site selection industries.
TexAmericas is one of the largest mixed-use industrial parks in the United States, with roughly 12,000 development-ready acres of land and about 3 million square feet of commercial and industrial product. It has the operating capabilities of a municipality but functions more like a traditional real estate development company.
Lionchase is a privatelyasset management firm that focuses on the growth of microcap and small-cap firms. Segment focus of the firm is technology, manufacturing, and power generation.