OBSERVER Photo by Jimmy McCarthy A deal is expected to close next week on the property purchase of 320 South Roberts Road. The state DEC said this week that cleanup activities are expected to begin soon. The site will become a cold storage facility owned by Peter Krog, of Krog Group in Buffalo, and Peter Wilson, of Sonwil Distribution Center of Buffalo. Fieldbrook Foods will lease the facility for storage of its products.

Cleanup is expected to commence soon at the former Edgewood Warehouse site in the city in anticipation for construction of a cold storage facility.

Property located at 320 South Roberts Road has been under the county’s ownership since 2008. A deal is expected to close this week with the next owners who are looking to demolish structures on the site, including a 167,000-square-foot facility, to construct a 71,400-square-foot freezer building.

The facility, when constructed, will have a tenant in Fieldbrook Foods for warehousing of its products. Twenty-five jobs are expected to be created as a result of the project.

Peter Krog and Peter Wilson will be owners of the facility. Krog, of Krog Group in Buffalo, has conducted several projects in the county — most notably the $35 million Chautauqua Harbor Hotel that’s currently under construction. Krog’s also developed the BWB Building on Washington Street in Jamestown and the Riverwalk Center on South Main Street in Jamestown. Wilson is CEO and president of Sonwil Distribution Center, a locally owned and operated logistics provider headquartered in Buffalo.

Rich Dixon, chief financial officer with the Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency, said everything is moving ahead. He said it’s not a simple real estate transaction due to the fact it’s a brownfield property.

“There’s a lot going on here and everything is moving ahead very nicely. Everyone is working diligently,” he said.

Earlier in the year, the IDA Board of Directors approved sales tax and mortgage recording tax exemptions as well as a 20-year PILOT, payment in lieu of taxes, for the project that’s estimating construction at $14 million.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation says it hopes cleanup will begin next month to address contamination at the site. Cleanup will be performed by Krog Group with oversight provided by the DEC. David Locey, DEC project manager overseeing cleanup, said they were at the site last week to sample paint inside the warehouse.

The DEC says cleanup will take five months once it begins. Along with demolition of onsite buildings, key components to the remedy include removal of debris, asbestos, contaminated wood block flooring and contaminated sediments in floor drains from the abandoned warehouses. Soil will be excavated from three hotspot areas with concentrations of semi-volatile organic compounds and some metals that are above typical levels for the site.

Other activities that will be seen on the property include the treating of contaminated groundwater, installing a venting depressurization system beneath the existing warehouse and covering the site with a layer of clean soil, pavement or concrete floor.

A site-specific health and safety plan (HASP) and a Community Air Monitoring Plan (CAMP) will be implemented during remediation activities. The HASP and CAMP establish procedures to protect on-site workers and residents and includes required air monitoring as well as dust and odor suppression measures.

The South Roberts Road site was once part of a larger industrial complex owned and operated by the American Locomotive Company, which first developed the site in 1910. ALCO manufactured locomotives at the complex until 1930.

Manufacturing operations later produced heat exchangers, pressure vessels, steel piping, military equipment and nuclear reactor components. The larger building on the site was later used by Dunkirk Ice Cream by Edgewood Investments Inc.