Alternative usage for refrigerated food warehouse buildings.

Alternative usage for refrigerated foodservice warehouse buildings.

The foodservice distribution facility is one of the most recent styles of food facilities types of temperature controlled real estate. Refrigerated food processing facilities began to appear about 100 years ago. Temperature controlled or refrigerated warehouse buildings date back as far as the 1860s if you consider the use of ice as the refrigerant type. The foodservice distribution facility, as industrial real estate market understands this multiple temperature industrial building, did not began being constructed until about the mid- 1960s. In the 1970s, the new construction of foodservice distribution buildings rapidly accelerated as the foodservice industry was also undergoing a rapid expansion in accordance with the American public's consumption and dining habits.
The 1970s, Foodservice distribution buildings had floor plans that included approximately 8% temperature controlled warehouse space. Today's new construction of Foodservice distribution industrial warehouse facilities may have as much as 50% freezer warehouse and cooler warehouse floor space. This dramatic increase in the amount of the refrigerated portion of a Foodservice building demonstrates the continually increasing consumption of refrigerated and frozen food products in the retail, wholesale and fast food marketplaces.
As Foodservice distribution facilities became available for resale typically there were two types of purchasers of this multiple temperature controlled industrial real estate building. The first type of purchaser was a landlord that would buy the facility and then lease the freezer and cooler warehouse space to one tenant and the dry warehouse space to another tenant and occasionally lease the office space out to another tenant. The second type of purchaser of a Foodservice distribution facility was a refrigerated public warehousing company. Many of these facilities had a floor plan with total square footage of 150,000 to 250,000 ft.² which allowed for the optimum revenues and expenses for a single location for a public refrigerated warehousing company. The 3 warehouse storage temperatures of freezer warehouse, cooler warehouse and dry warehouse provided the temperature flexibility that these third-party purveyors of warehousing services required for their clientele.

A typical Foodservice distribution building is a facility available through Hawk Distribution Services,LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ located at 7095 Vicksburg Pike, Ft. Wayne, Indiana 46804. This facility was bought and then used by a public refrigerated warehousing company. The building is a total of 139,000 ft.² and situated on 10 acres of land. The building has 45,000 ft.² of freezer warehouse and another 55,000 ft.² of warehouse space that is either be for cooler warehouse storage or for ambient/dry warehouse storage. The available services include dry, cooler and freezer public warehousing services as well as warehouse space leasing for freezer warehouse space for lease or for cooler warehouse space for rent.Norfolk Southern rail Road service is available to the refrigerated building.

Online tour of this facility is available at http://property.loopnet.com/14986479 or for further information  contact Jim Cronin, a real estate broker at 314-994-0577 or e-mail j.cronin@hawkds.com

 To view other freezer or cooler warehouse buildings for sale or for lease in the Midwest go to www.hawkds.com