Just days after Assurity Life Insurance Co. announced it would be moving into the Antelope Valley area, a Kearney company says it will be leaving.
MATT OLBERDING / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:00 pm
Just days after Assurity Life Insurance Co. announced it would be moving into the Antelope Valley area, a Kearney company says it will be leaving.
Cash-Wa Distributing, which will be losing the ability to use its Lincoln distribution center at 2500 State Fair Park Drive because of road improvements for the Antelope Valley project, said this week it plans to expand in Kearney, where it is based.
Cash-Wa describes itself as a food service and convenience store distributor with nearly 540 employees and 2007 sales of $380 million.
The company said it wants to build a 71,300-square-foot warehouse and truck terminal near its headquarters, pending city approval.
The warehouse will replace the Lincoln facility, which according to the Lancaster County Assessor’s Web site, is a little under 40,000 square feet.
Cash-Wa President Tom Henning told the Kearney Hub that construction would start on the first phase of the Kearney project by fall.
He said the impending loss of the Lincoln site because of the Antelope Valley project made the time right to consider consolidating in Kearney.
“The (Lincoln) land takeover has been put on hold a number of times, but we are getting closer to losing that property,” Henning said. “We need to replace that distribution center, and moving it to Kearney makes a lot of sense.
“We wanted to build in Omaha or Lincoln because, to be quite honest, it’s a lot easier to find people to fill jobs than it is in Kearney,” he said. “But in the end, when everything came together, Kearney ended up being the right place for us to do this.”
Henning did not say when the Lincoln facility would close or how many jobs would be moving to Kearney, and he did not return a phone message left by the Journal Star.
He did say the Kearney expansion could create 100 additional jobs there. Cash-Wa already employs 380 people in Kearney.
Lincoln officials say Cash-Wa is jumping the gun in choosing to leave the city.
Wayne Teten, Antelope Valley project manager, acknowledged that planned road improvements will cut off access that Cash-Wa needs at the site, but that point won’t be reached for 8 to 10 years.
He said the road improvements that will affect Cash-Wa are scheduled for the second phase of Antelope Valley work.
The first phase is not scheduled to end until 2011, and Teten said a best-case scenario would have second phase work starting in 2016.
“It’s somewhere out in the far future,” he said.
Teten said the city had been working with Cash-Wa on looking at possible sites for relocation and the last he knew negotiations were still going on.
Jason Smith, vice president of the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development, said he didn’t know a lot of the details of what was going on between Cash-Wa and the city, but Cash-Wa had been shown multiple sites for possible relocation in Lincoln.
The Antelope Valley project is a $238-million flood control, roads and redevelopment project that is taking place mostly north and east of downtown Lincoln.
As part of the project, dozens of homes and businesses have been displaced, but the city is hoping that the work will produce a new economic boost in the area.
Assurity earlier this week announced plans for a new $32 million headquarters near 19th and Q that should be open by late 2011.
Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com. The Associated Press contributed to this story.