Construction starts on new cold storage facility at Port of Tacoma

Versacold Logistics Services has broken ground on a new $30 million cold storage facility at the Port of Tacoma. The facility will offer 200,000 square feet of freezer and refrigerated storage space. There are also future plans for an 85,000 square-foot expansion.

The facility is located at the Port Commerce Center, an industrial real estate development of Northwest Building LLC, a private development company based in Seattle. The Commerce Center encompasses a total of about 100 acres of property leased from the Port of Tacoma, and is located within a mile of Port terminals. All Port Commerce Center property is in Foreign Trade Zone #86.

VersaCold is subleasing about 17 acres of land from Northwest Building Corporation for its cold storage facility.

The facility is being built by Fisher & Sons, Inc., which is based in Burlington, Wash. The company has built more than 100 cold storage facilities since 1954.

The construction project currently has about 35 workers. That number is expected to grow to more than 100 during the peak construction time. Most of the workers are from the greater Tacoma area.

The first phase of the facility (about half of the building) is scheduled to open in July 2010, and the second half will open in mid-August. Once fully operational, the facility is expected to create up to 100 new jobs.