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Cold storage to locate on city brownfield

It looks like the lawsuit that prevented a developer from locating in one neighborhood in the city of Dunkirk has not prevented it from setting sights on another.

Neighbors rallied against Great Lake Cold Storage building a freezer facility for Fieldbrook Foods on the empty lot between Central Avenue, Fairview Avenue and Main Street Extension, culminating in an Article 78 lawsuit.

Many residents at the time suggested an ideal location for the development would be the former Atwater warehouse on Roberts Road. Even Mayor Willie Rosas said if the brownfield had been remediated prior to the developer’s interest it would have been everyone’s first choice.

Although the stoppage of the project was a disappointment, Rosas said the city has not stopped working hard to keep the $15 million development that promised 50 or more jobs located in the city.

To that end, the city, Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency, the developer and a brownfield consultant met on Tuesday.

“We reached out to the county IDA and to the state to see what incentives we can offer to keep that project here in the city as opposed to going to the state of Pennsylvania,” Rosas explained.

From the moment this facility was announced, the option of a location either in Dunkirk or North East, Pa. has been on the table. After the lawsuit made the project in the city too time consuming, it was later announced a location in the Chadwick Bay Industrial Park in Sheridan was being considered.

On Friday, CCIDA Director Kevin Sanvidge said the help of the consultant has opened up the developer to the city brownfield location.“The location is going to be the brownfield on Roberts Road where the Atwater building is. With the developer being from out of town, he wasn’t sure about how things worked with New York state for brownfields, so we brought in a consultant Peter Krog from the Krog Corp., who does many, many brownfields. As far as Fieldbrook goes, they want it to be in the city of Dunkirk. It’s a perfect location to start developing that area on Roberts Road,” he told the OBSERVER.

The former Atwater warehouse is located on Roberts Road near the train overpass and intersection with Talcott Street and has been touted as a perfect location.

“That’s right on Millennial Parkway, so it’s a perfect heading to Ralston (Purina) and great location where the developer is thinking about possibly doing a second warehouse after the first is completed. It’s a perfect location and it’s in the city of Dunkirk,” Sanvidge added. “We’re excited about this moving forward. … We want this project to move forward so that we can have it up and running in the fall of 2018 if not sooner.”

He said the developer, consultant, CCIDA and city will meet again in two weeks to discuss the project.

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