Refrigerated Warehouse -versus- Refrigerated Public Warehousing Services

Refrigerated Warehouse - versus - Refrigerated Warehousing.

There often is some confusion between the meaning of  what Refrigerated Warehousing and a Refrigerated Public Warehousing Services refers to. The two have come are sometimes synonymous. However, there is very distinct difference between refrigerated buildings and public refrigerated warehouse services. One describes a certain type of industrial real estate facility. The other describes a portion of a logistics activity.

A refrigerated warehouse is a term that is used in the industrial real estate industry. It is a warehouse or perhaps a distribution center that has all or a portion of its’ floor space capable of maintaining plus 40° Fahrenheit to minus 20°F storage temperatures. A refrigerated warehouse is a building where a company keeps its’ own inventory of refrigerated products in storage that will be shipped from that company’s building at some later date. The national average size of a refrigerated building is a total facility footprint of 35,000 ft.². There are refrigerated buildings as small as 10,000 ft.² and as large as 600,000 ft.²

Refrigerated warehousing is a distribution or logistics activity rather than real estate. Refrigerated warehousing is where a company will store for another company industrial product(s) that requires refrigerated or frozen storage. A refrigerated warehousing company is in the business of providing warehousing and storage services for food processors or food distributors that require warehousing services. These warehousing activities generally entail receiving of the product, storing the product for some period of time and then shipping the product back out of the warehouse. Sometimes the refrigerated warehousing company will provide added value services such as case picking or repackaging of the food products that require refrigeration.

The refrigerated warehousing company provides temporary solutions to that corporations that occupy their own refrigerated warehouse building. A refrigerated warehouse company is able to keep refrigerated product when a refrigerated building owner cannot hold any additional inventory at their own refrigerated building. Also there are situations where it makes sense for a food distributor or food processor to contract with or employ a refrigerated warehouse warehousing company rather than purchase or lease another refrigerated building and then staff it with its own personnel.

Hawk Distribution Services, LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ thoroughly understands the difference these often confused terms. Contact Jim Cronin, a real estate broker at 314-994-0577 or e-mail of j.cronin@hawkds.com  to confidentially discuss whether using public refrigerated warehousing or acquiring a the refrigerated facility is the best option for your company.

Refrigerated Warehouse Buildings convertible to freezer or cooler storage space.

Convertible Refrigerated Warehouse Buildings.

Refrigerated storage space within an industrial warehouse building is always defined by the limits of its’ temperature capabilities. All warehouse space in refrigerated buildings with temperature capabilities of a plus 65° Fahrenheit down to a minus 20° Fahrenheit is by definition defined as refrigerated warehouse space.

However a question often asked in refrigerated real estate brokerage of freezer warehouse or cooler warehouse space is an understanding of what the temperature range capacity is of the refrigerated warehouse storage space that is temperature controlled. Different refrigerated food products have different temperature storage specification requirements. Most companies offer many different refrigerated food products and therefore have multiple refrigerated storage temperature needs inside of one refrigerated warehouse building.

When understanding whether or not a freezer or cooler warehouse building is capable of maintaining a certain temperature, 3 aspects of the construction of freezer or cooler warehouse building that have to be considered. Those aspects are the warehouse floor, the installation within the walls and the ceiling and the type of refrigeration system.

The refrigerated warehouse floor will either contain an in-floor heating/defrosting system or it does not have defrosting capabilities .If the building was designed exclusively for freezer warehouse storage, it will have an heating system underneath the warehouse floor. These heating/defrosting systems are of various types, but it is designed to not let the moisture in the ground below the refrigerated warehouse floor to freeze. Whatever water freezes, it expands and that expansion of water below the refrigerated warehouse floor will cause the floor to heave upwards and possibly even result in making a structurally unstable warehouse building.
If the building was initially designed for any refrigerated food processing operations, underneath the food processing building’s production floor areas there will be floor drains. Also, there will be various water pipes for processing and cleanup of foods manufacturing operations. The floor drains will conduct the cold to where the pipes may run causing freezing problems anywhere in the building. Occasionally the property surrounding that building will eventually freeze all the way to the sanitary sewer system. Then of course all water pipes within the production floor area freeze when it gets colder than 32° Fahrenheit. This type of building can never be used for the storage of product requiring freezer warehouse storage temperatures. To do so cause damage to the facility due to the expansion caused by unprotected freezing. The refrigeration systems were designed for temperatures higher than 32° Fahrenheit, so to operate those below that, would cause the refrigeration system to eventually freeze up with ice. Also ice would form under the floor and the floors would heave at some point time.

Some industrial warehouse facilities are designed to provide storage temperatures only for a plus 40°F to a plus 65°F. The installation thickness and efficiencies for the insulated walls and ceiling required to operate at these refrigerated temperatures are less efficient than those required to operate at freezer storage temperatures less than 32°.

The refrigeration systems that are designed to operate in above freezing conditions have no defrosting mechanisms. Therefore if a cooler building was brought to below freezing temperatures, eventually the warehouse floors would buckle and heave, the refrigeration systems which freeze up with ice and until both of those happened, the energy consumption would be abnormally high.

However if you purchase or lease in industrial warehouse facility with freezer warehouse space, you can always store product in that building that requires less than 32° storage temperatures. If you wish to have temperatures between 40° and 65°F then all that will be needed is to change the refrigeration system to a different type of gas and pressures within that system and other various minor modifications to the evaporators. The floors will not heave upwards because there are is no underground moisture freezing going on to cause expansion. The wall and ceiling insulation will also be more than efficient. This is what is referred to as Convertible Warehouse Space.

As the saying goes in the refrigerated building real estate brokerage industry, "You can always make a freezer building a cooler building, but you can never make a cooler building a freezer building".

Hawk Distribution Services provides real estate brokerage services for refrigerated buildings. Information about refrigerated buildings available for sale or lease is available at http://www.hawkds.com/ or contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com

Humidity and Refrigerated Warehouse Storage Space.

Refrigerated building real estate primarily involves refrigerated food processing buildings or freezer warehouse buildings or cooler warehouse buildings that are either for sale or for lease or sublease. However, there are occasionally industrial refrigerated distribution facilities that become available that have cooler warehouse space and warehouse space providing 65° storage temperatures that are also are equipped with humidity control. Cooler warehouse space is maintained at 32° to 45° never does need any type of special mechanical apparatus to control humidity within the cooler storage areas. The cooling process allows for acceptable humidity levels for the storage of food products. Refrigerated warehouse space that is maintained at 65° will usually require some sort of special mechanical apparatus for manipulation of the humidity within those 65° warehouse storage areas. The refrigeration mechanicals and the cooling mechanisms to take heat out of the air for the cooler warehouse space automatically remove much of the humidity. The refrigeration mechanicals needed to keep warehouse storage space at 65° are not designed to effectively ensure the consistent regulation of the humidity for the warehouse storage of food products and food ingredients. To maintain proper humidity levels in this type of warehouse space requires special mechanical systems to add or remove moisture from the air.

Many food products require only warehouse storage temperatures are not greater than 65°. The reason for this is that many food products, such as candy and other such confectioneries, require their refrigerated warehouse space being maintained at 65°, because warehouse temperatures warmer than that would affect the candy product’s appearance, quality and shelf life. If the candy was stored in a non-refrigerated industrial warehouse space (also known as dry warehouse space) during the summer months, the temperatures in the non-refrigerated industrial warehouse (dry) space might reach 80° or 90° Fahrenheit or higher. In most parts of the United States, air temperatures over 80° is most often associated with elevated humidity levels.

Humidity control is also necessary for candy warehouse storage, because chocolate and other confectionary products easily lose the moisture that was added in the food production process. Many candies and confectioneries can be stored at cooler warehouse storage temperatures or can be frozen. Many candy manufacturers place their product into public refrigerated warehouse companies requesting freezer storage services. This is so that they can build an inventory for the holiday seasons. Placing any food product into freezer warehouse storage stops the shelf life of the food product.

Manufacturers of candy and other confectionary companies typically lease refrigerated industrial warehouse space on a seasonal basis. The reason that many candy manufacturers lease industrial refrigerated warehouse space with cooler warehouse or freezer warehouse storage temperature capabilities is that candy is consumed in the United States during certain peak consumption times such as Halloween, the Easter holiday, and the mid November to late December time period of religious and national holidays.

Jim Cronin of Hawk Distribution Services, LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ has a refrigerated warehouse space for lease listed for lease at 467 Bussen Underground Road, St. Louis County, Missouri 63129. This refrigerated warehouse property has cooler warehouse space and humidity controlled temperature warehouse space which operates naturally at 65° Fahrenheit. An online property tour of this refrigerated warehouse space is available by linking to website address of http://property.loopnet.com/17063421 Jim Cronin can be contacted at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com

Highest Price Ever for a Refrigerated Warehouse Building

Higest Price Ever for a Refrigerated    Warehouse Building.




Highest Price Ever for a Refrigerated Warehouse Building.


The highest price ever paid for a refrigerated warehouse building occurred in November, 2010 in St. Louis City, Missouri. The facility was a 23,655 ft.² multiple temperature warehouse facility with freezer warehouse, coolerwarehouse and ambient temperature or dry warehouse storage space. The refrigerated building was situated on 2 acres of property. The building was originally constructed in 1951 as a truck terminal. It was later converted into a foodservice distribution facility which required the installation of freezer space and cooler warehouse storage space. There was a low cieling 5,500 ft.² of freezer warehouse and 1,000 ft.² of cooler warehouse space in the refrigerated foodservice building. The refrigerated foodservice facility was located at 1717 North Broadway, St. Louis, Missouri 63102. The location was just north of the downtown St. Louis City central business district corridor.

The St. Louis metropolitan area is a 2 state Metropolitan area which is bisected by the Mississippi River. The downtown St. Louis area is adjacent to the Mississippi River. There is only one significant bridge connecting the Missouri and Illinois portions of the Metropolitan St. Louis area is located in the downtown area. The bridge is known as the Popular Street Bridge. The Poplar Street Bridge provides the convergence of 5 different interstate highways, which creates excessive demand on that bridge and its approaches during multiple traffic peak utilization periods during any day, such as morning and evening rush hour traffic or major professional sporting events. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) decided that a second bridge was necessary for the downtown St. Louis area to alleviate these traffic bottleneck problems for the over utilized bridge. The refrigerated foodservice building at 1717 North Broadway set right in the way.

The refrigerated building was owned by M&L Frozen Foods. M&L Frozen Foods is a full line foodservice company http://www.mlfoodstl.com/ This privately held company has been in business for more than 100 years. M &L Frozen Foods purchased the building in 1982 and added the refrigerated cold storage capacity. The location provided excellent access to the downtown high-rise office building district and also a significant number of restaurants and hotels and several casinos, as well as a national convention center. There are 3 major professional sports franchises that have their arenas or stadiums only a few miles from this refrigerated foodservice facility. M & L Frozen Foods’ location was vital to this customer base because of their immediate proximity to all of those businesses and provides immediate availability and weekend access to this restaurant, sporting, hostility and entertainment submarket located in the downtown corridor.

Immediately there became a vast discrepancy between the Department of Transportation for the State of Missouri and their determination of value for the refrigerated foodservice facility and M &L Frozen Foods’ expectation of compensation. M & L Frozen Foods needed a refrigerated warehouse building with freezer and cooler temperature capabilities that was adjacent to that downtown corridor to move into so they could keep their customer base which relied on M&L’s proximity. There were no existing industrial warehouse facilities with refrigerated cold storage warehouse space available adjacent to St. Louis’s downtown corridor. M & L conducted a search for public taking and land valuation attorney to assist them in their eminent domain case with the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The owners of M&L Frozen Foods selected Denlow & Henry http://www.denlow.com/ This law firm works exclusively with eminent domain and condemnation. Robert Denlow was the condemnation attorney for this landmark refrigerated cold storage eminent domain litigation case. Robert Denlow is nationally recognized within professional organizations and speaks nationally and internationally on the topic of eminent domain and condemnation. Robert Denlow can be reached at 314-725-5151 or rdenlow@denlow.com Denlow employed as his expert on refrigerated cold storage, Jim Cronin, a real estate broker of Hawk Distribution Services, LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ Jim Cronin can be reached at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com


Condemnation is the right of the government to take property for public use and provide just compensation for that property; however no one is required to pay more than their fair share when private property is taken for public use. Through the expert and skilled leadership of Robert Denlow, as well as the determination of M&L Frozen Foods’ principal, Lenny Toco, the court system ultimately realized that a refrigerated facility near the proximity of an existing customer base was the essence of this 100-year-old family-owned business.

The courts awarded $5,300,000.00 or $224.00 a square foot for 1717 North Broadway.

Types Of Refrigerated Warehouse Freezer Floors

Refrigerated warehouse freezer building floors.


A refrigerated warehouse building is basically an industrial warehouse facility with the capability of providing interior temperatures of 65° or less in all or a portion of the building. One often overlooked or misunderstood fact about these specialized buildings is when there is a need to provide underfloor heating.

The need for underfloor heating is entirely derived by the subsoil temperature. Whenever the temperature below any floor begins to freeze, pressure develops upward from the expansion of that frozen water that is in the soil beneath the concrete warehouse floor. The lower the temperature above the floor the further the cold will penetrate downward into the subsoil below the floor. The further down the freezing occurs the larger the volume of water that will be frozen and the greater the total amount of upward pressure on the warehouse floor. In order to alleviate the pressure on the floor that from freezing of water and moisture in the soil below the warehouse floor certain types of defrosting mechanisms can be used.

There are 3 types of defrosting apparatus that can be installed in the construction process of a refrigerated warehouse facility that has freezer temperature capabilities. Those types are forced air, glycol and electric heat. Forced air defrosting is provided by piping that runs through the cement warehouse floor and allows ambient outside air or forced heated air through that piping to prevent subsoil moisture freezing. Glycol is a mechanical system that pumps a heated antifreeze type of liquid through a plumbing system within the cement floor to prevent subsurface soil freezing. Electric heating is provided by a providing heat to the warehouse floor through a heating system utilizing electric generated heat underneath the cement of the warehouse floor.

There is much debate as to which of the 3 types are the most efficient way of preventing subsurface pressure and floor heaving caused by freezer warehouse space maintained at less than 32°. Many factors are incorporated into deciding which of the 3 types is appropriate when constructing a refrigerated warehouse facility. Typically glycol systems are for very large warehouse facilities that have extremely low storage temperatures. Forced air systems work well in buildings that are in warmer climates or warehouse floors are above grade. Electric defrosting of freezer warehouse floors are best with interior modular insulated panel installations into existing warehouse structures or with new buildings with small or medium-sized amounts of freezer warehouse storage areas.

When evaluating the purchase of an existing refrigerated cold storage is best to evaluate the floor will frosting system as part of the due diligence required when purchasing a temperature controlled facility. Hawk Distribution Services http://www.hawkds.com/ has over 25 years of experience as a licensed real estate broker in assisting buyers of industrial refrigerated real estate.

Refrigerated Meat Processing Buildings How they Sell and Lease.

Refrigerated Meat Processing Facilities.

There are basically two types of refrigerated meat processing facilities. A meat processing facility is either a livestock kill operation or a further processing facility.Howerer both are inspected by the USDA

The first type is where beef and pork companies operate their livestock killing operations. These facilities are always located in rural or agricultural industrial real estate marketplaces. Historically these facilities did not have connections to municipal water and sewer systems because they were located so far away from the nearest town. Also the water demands of the facility sometimes were larger than the entire capacity of the nearest town’s water system. Sometimes the livestock kill facilities discharges into the sewer system was beyond the capabilities of the nearest municipality which resulted in wastewater settling ponds at the site. This was problematic in real estate brokerage because of environmental issues sometimes resulted at the facility site from these wastewater settling ponds. These problems revolved around that the facility had to maintain its own water and sewer systems, and therefore any environmental ramifications remained at the site after operations had ceased. These were also truly specialized buildings and not always easily adaptable to alternative users. Resale of the property to another livestock kill operator most likely would not usually occur because the current owners did not wish to sell to their competition. Also depending on the age of the plant, the processing process and systems had become inefficient for livestock kill operations. Further there has been reluctance for any grandfathered inspection criteria items to be passed on to a new purchaser of the aging livestock slaughter facilities.

The second type of facility was a refrigerated further processing facility. This facility could have been in any type or size of industrial real estate market. The refrigerated facility processed beef and pork carcasses. This processing is known in the food processing industry as "further processing". The products that were produced in these facilities are extremely varied as the many types of foods you would see in any supermarket or in a restaurant menu. When these facilities did become available their design and floorplan was easily adaptable to other types of non USDA food processing operations or FDA inspected facilities . The facilities were well constructed with all of the water, sewer, employee welfare and electrical amenities already built into this type of formerly UDSA inspected refrigerated food processing building. Companies that process food generally found all of these amenities desirable whether or not their processes and or food processing operations required refrigeration with either freezer or cooler warehouse storage temperatures or refrigerated food processing areas.

Whenever a refrigerated UDSA inspected further processing facility or building becames available in any real estate market, whether it was a large or small building and was in good repair, and also there was also a ready and willing food processing company also in that industrial real estate market that was in need of a different location, these used refrigerated facilities with the superior choice over any new facility construction options. The predominant factors establishing that superior choice were immediate availability and purchase price.

Jim Cronin and Phil Pisciotta, real estate agents of Hawk Distribution Services, LLC www.hawkds.com have extensive real estate brokerage experiences with these types of facilities. Jim Cronin of St. Louis, Missouri can be contacted at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com and Phil Pisciotta of Kansas City, Missouri can be contacted at p.pisciotta@hawkds.com  or 816-510-2060.

Tribute to Barney Bossard, a Respected Member of the Midwest Produce Industry.

A Tribute to Barney Fozzard, a respected member of the Midwest's produce industry.

Barney Fozzard is a respected member of the Midwest’s fruit and vegetable growing and repackaging industry with an excess of 50 years of management and financial positions in southern Illinois. Barney began his career in the produce industry in 1951 after his graduation from college with an accounting degree. He first produce industry position was the Office Manager for the Illinois Fruit Growers Exchange which is located in Carbondale, Illinois. Carbondale is in southwest Illinois near the Shawnee National Forest. The Illinois Fruit Growers Exchange specialized in locally grown fruits and vegetables and was best known for their apples and peaches. The soil and growing conditions are excellent for fruit trees in that part of Southern Illinois.

The Illinois Fruit Growers Exchange was a cooperative of 146 stockholder members. This cooperative provided its members a superior way to market and distribute their locally grown fruit and vegetables from their orchards. The Cooperative became so successful that it constructed and relocated into a brand-new facility in 1964. Barney Fozzard toured the United States for the cooperative to research the most advanced facilities at that time for warehousing and repackaging operations of the member’s produce. The new 50,000 square feet facility was then constructed on 12 acres at 7995 North Jamestown Road Cobden, Illinois 62920 which is in Union County and 11 miles from Carbondale, but closer to the local orchard industry. The produce repackaging storage facility included a state-of-the-art ammonia refrigeration mechanical system. It was necessary to very quickly remove huge amounts of temperature from the apples and peaches picked from the local orchards of the members of the Illinois Fruit Growers Exchange. The fruit and vegetables would be received at field temperature, quickly cooled to 32° through blast cooling then held at the facility in cooler warehouse space. The refrigeration system was capable of taking produce at ambient temperature of the mid-90° to 32° within 36 hours. The refrigerated warehouse area had 26 foot c Hawk eilings which was unusually high for a 1964 produce repackaging facility. The product was marketed nationally, repackaged and then shipped throughout the United States.

As agriculture in general shifted from the small family farm to larger scales of farming and produce growing operations, Barney orchestrated the sale of the Cooperative to its 4 major shareholders. Barney stayed on as the Comptroller and managed the business operations of the new company. Then in 1991, Heartland Harvest and Rose Farms purchased this cooperative. Rose Farms operated a 5,000 acre vegetable growing operation that specialized in red peppers, green peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. Heartland Harvest and Rose Farms employed up to 350 employees in the farming operation and 175 employees in 2 shifts in the packaging and repackaging operations still located at the Cobden facility. Barney stayed on as the Controller of this company until Heartland Harvest closed its doors in 1996. Barney then stayed on as custodian of the property until it was sold to Rosemont Farms in 2005 and reestablished a packing operation for locally grown fruits and vegetables in the southern Illinois region.

Barney Fozzard’s 55 year career is perhaps one of the longest and most successful careers ever in the produce industry. Barney's thorough understanding of the Midwest produce growers and the repackaging industry is unrivaled. His honesty, integrity and efficiency and industry knowledge was appreciated and admired by throughout his distinguished career.

If you would like to contact Barney; please contact Jim Cronin, a real estate broker at Hawk Distribution Services, LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ at either 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com