Cold storage warehouse for food planned in Port Richmond

On Port Richmond’s western border, between a derelict railroad embankment and a brick health-care campus, lies an empty lot the size of more than five football fields.

But by this time next year, it will be the neighborhood’s latest warehouse, with the distinction of being far larger and chillier than the rest. The BG Capital and FreezPak Logistics last week put the finishing touches on the financing for a 172,000-square-foot cold storage facility.

“The business strategy is to open up these warehouses in port-centric markets where they can bring the product in and that have large, dense urban areas in close proximity to these ports,” said Tyler Huffman, vice president of BG Capital, which owns and is developing the property with FreezPak.

FreezPak primarily deals in food retail, Huffman said, with customers using the company’s facilities as storage for last-mile distribution purposes.

BG Capital acquired the sprawling site in 2017. Residential uses were never considered for the property because of “environmental concerns,” Huffman said, because of a former industrial use as a paper mill. The company employed Pennoni, an engineering and construction company, to do remediation and vapor mitigation work on the site, which is now deemed safe for commercial use.

After the cleanup, the company negotiated with Amazon’s real estate brokers for use of the area as a distribution center, and when that deal petered out, rented it to First Student, a school bus company, for vehicle storage. But BG Capital was still on the lookout for a more intensive use for the site than a surface parking lot.

The FreezPak project is estimated to cost $93 million and will employ 60 or more people with salaries around $65,000 plus health-care and retirement benefits. BG Capital and FreezPak have negotiated with community groups and will provide preferential hiring for Port Richmond and Harrowgate residents.

“It’s not as many jobs [as the Amazon warehouse], but I don’t care if there’s only 10 jobs — that’s 10 more jobs than there were here,” said Ken Paul, president of Port Richmond On Patrol & Civic Association. “Everybody likes bringing jobs in, and we’re tired of looking at an empty lot.”

The site is a half-mile from the Allegheny stop on the Market-Frankford Line, which the company is promoting as a convenience for workers who do not wish to drive.

The southern end of the lot opens on the heavily trafficked Allegheny Avenue, which includes several popular bus lines. The truck traffic associated with the business is expected to be concentrated on more sparsely used Westmoreland Street, which is already lined with warehouses.

The Port Richmond business will be FreezPak’s premiere location in the Philadelphia area. The company has facilities in other large metropolitan areas, like the New York-centered North Jersey suburbs and Miami.

“It’s primarily food retail,” Huffman said. “A few of their clients that they work with are Tyson Foods, Birds Eye vegetables, Restaurant Depot.”

The Conrail-owned embankment neighboring the future FreezPak facility is dotted with people living tents, some of whom were forcibly relocated from another corner of nearby Kensington in recent years.

“I have the encampment here,” Paul said. “They are [living] next to the property. But right they’ll be gone” before construction starts.

Huffman said there is extensive fencing around the area, which will be bolstered as construction begins.

BG Capital and FreezPak estimate that the project will be complete in November or December 2023.