Philip Morris USA is bringing a million square feet of tobacco to Chesterfield County.
The company announced Wednesday that it is the tenant behind “Project Twister,” a four-warehouse, million-square-foot planned development near Chesterfield’s Meadowville Technology Park that BizSense first reported on in April.
The cigarette giant will use a quartet of planned, 250,000-square-foot warehouses to store tobacco waiting to be processed. The leaves will be shipped in from farms in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee and sit in the forthcoming warehouses until it’s sent up Bermuda Hundred Road to the nearby Philip Morris’s manufacturing center. Spokesman Jeff Caldwell said about half the nation’s cigarettes are made at that plant.
“This new facility will allow us a strategic location for us to store our raw tobacco leaves which are used not far away in our Richmond manufacturing center to produce our tobacco products,” Caldwell said.
Philip Morris will lease the 118 acres where the new facility will be built. USAA will buy and own the property and then pay Atlanta-based Seefried Properties to develop the building. Philip Morris will then lease it from USAA’s real estate arm.
Caldwell said the company anticipates investing $50 million in the property, which includes the rent Philip Morris will pay over the term of its lease.
He declined to specify how long the lease would run, saying only that he hopes it will begin this summer after USAA closes on the land. Construction will begin immediately after closing and Philip Morris hopes to have the facility operational sometime next year.
Caldwell said he believes the job has gone out to bid to potential contractors but none have been selected yet.
The industrial development tag team of USAA and Seefried Properties is no stranger to Richmond industrial projects. They previously developed the million-square-foot Amazon distribution center just up the road in Meadowville as well as the Amazon center in Dinwiddie County.
Garrett Hart, assistant director of Chesterfield Economic Development, said the deal came together through Seefried Properties. Philip Morris was conducting a “Southern search,” as he called it, where Virginia was the northernmost state. Philip Morris enlisted Seefried to find a site and develop the project. The company looked at about eight potential sites before bringing the Philip Morris plant to Chesterfield.
“It’s repeat business with a really good national developer, so that speaks to the service our site development and building inspection team gave them in their Amazon project,” Hart said. “They knew how Chesterfield could get it done for them, and they knew it would be straightforward and that we would deliver it on time.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Greater Richmond Partnership, Timmons Group and CBRE also assisted Philip Morris on the site-selection process.
The tobacco giant will not hire additional employees for the facility but will contract management of the warehouse center to a third party. Caldwell estimated that the contractor will need 15 to 30 people to operate the facility.
The Philip Morris site is the fourth major industrial development to take root in Chesterfield in recent years. The sprawling 900-acre Meadowville Technology Park has landed a new Capital One data center and a 400,000-square-foot distribution center currently under construction for medical supply company Medline. That’s in addition to the Amazon fulfillment center announced in December 2011.
“We’ve still got plenty to develop down there,” Hart said.
Philip Morris USA is bringing a million square feet of tobacco to Chesterfield County.
The company announced Wednesday that it is the tenant behind “Project Twister,” a four-warehouse, million-square-foot planned development near Chesterfield’s Meadowville Technology Park that BizSense first reported on in April.
The cigarette giant will use a quartet of planned, 250,000-square-foot warehouses to store tobacco waiting to be processed. The leaves will be shipped in from farms in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee and sit in the forthcoming warehouses until it’s sent up Bermuda Hundred Road to the nearby Philip Morris’s manufacturing center. Spokesman Jeff Caldwell said about half the nation’s cigarettes are made at that plant.
“This new facility will allow us a strategic location for us to store our raw tobacco leaves which are used not far away in our Richmond manufacturing center to produce our tobacco products,” Caldwell said.
Philip Morris will lease the 118 acres where the new facility will be built. USAA will buy and own the property and then pay Atlanta-based Seefried Properties to develop the building. Philip Morris will then lease it from USAA’s real estate arm.
Caldwell said the company anticipates investing $50 million in the property, which includes the rent Philip Morris will pay over the term of its lease.
He declined to specify how long the lease would run, saying only that he hopes it will begin this summer after USAA closes on the land. Construction will begin immediately after closing and Philip Morris hopes to have the facility operational sometime next year.
Caldwell said he believes the job has gone out to bid to potential contractors but none have been selected yet.
The industrial development tag team of USAA and Seefried Properties is no stranger to Richmond industrial projects. They previously developed the million-square-foot Amazon distribution center just up the road in Meadowville as well as the Amazon center in Dinwiddie County.
Garrett Hart, assistant director of Chesterfield Economic Development, said the deal came together through Seefried Properties. Philip Morris was conducting a “Southern search,” as he called it, where Virginia was the northernmost state. Philip Morris enlisted Seefried to find a site and develop the project. The company looked at about eight potential sites before bringing the Philip Morris plant to Chesterfield.
“It’s repeat business with a really good national developer, so that speaks to the service our site development and building inspection team gave them in their Amazon project,” Hart said. “They knew how Chesterfield could get it done for them, and they knew it would be straightforward and that we would deliver it on time.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Greater Richmond Partnership, Timmons Group and CBRE also assisted Philip Morris on the site-selection process.
The tobacco giant will not hire additional employees for the facility but will contract management of the warehouse center to a third party. Caldwell estimated that the contractor will need 15 to 30 people to operate the facility.
The Philip Morris site is the fourth major industrial development to take root in Chesterfield in recent years. The sprawling 900-acre Meadowville Technology Park has landed a new Capital One data center and a 400,000-square-foot distribution center currently under construction for medical supply company Medline. That’s in addition to the Amazon fulfillment center announced in December 2011.
“We’ve still got plenty to develop down there,” Hart said.