The Chautauqua County Legislature met over Zoom Wednesday evening.

Chautauqua County officials have approved a property sale in the city of Dunkirk which will permit an existing city business to expand.

In 2018, Roberts Road Freezer, LLC purchased about 10 acres of land from the county to build a 100,000 foot freezer. The company, which was at time was doing business with Fieldbrook Foods, left an option open for them to purchase another three parcels of land for $1 in the next six years.

During the legislature meeting Wednesday, county lawmakers agreed to modify the resolution to allow the company to purchase an additional 7.5 acres.

Mark Geise, Deputy County Executive for Economic Development and Chief Executive Officer of the County of Chautauqua Industrial Development Agency, told county leaders in committee meetings last week that Wells, which now owns Fieldbrook, is doing an internal expansion, which is why Roberts Road Freezer, LLC wants the additional land. He declined to give specifics on any possible expansion.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Legislator Robert Bankowski, D-Dunkirk, noted this is the former site of Roblin Steel. “Roberts Road Freezer Company has consumed half this lot of land to build their new cold storage facility. The remainder piece of this property is somewhat of an odd-shaped parcel and it would only benefit the Roberts Road Freezer Company for a possible expansion down the road, so I’m 100% behind this resolution,” he said.

Legislator Kevin Muldowney, R-Dunkirk, agreed. He noted the site took more than a dozen years to develop.

“It’s really a nice situation where the federal government came in, New York State came in, Chautauqua County came in, and the city of Dunkirk came in to help this,” he said. “Each level of government helped to clean up this property.”

Muldowney credited a number of current and former officials for helping make the property viable. “From Mark Thomas (former county executive), to Willie Rosas (current mayor), to Amo Houghton (late Congressional representative), to Pat McGee (late state senator), and Cathy Young (former state senator) all played a big part in this project. How wonderful this is that a company has actually built on this property as a result of all those efforts and they actually want more,” he said. “It’s a real true example of governments working together.”

The resolution was unanimously approved.