During the first week of March, 2020, the final bricks of the old Fresh Direct warehouse in L.I.C. came tumbling down. This building had a long history, and the future of this now cleared site is unknown (for the moment).
History
Located on Borden avenue, this property was originally part of the LIRR’s “Wheelspur” yard. Some time after the 1940s, some of the properties on the north side of the LIRR’s “Lower Montauk” tracks were sold for industrial use. The old Montauk Steel company was located on the far east edge of these lots, while the Blanchard and Eppens -Smith Coffee buildings were just across the street. The property on the south side of the tracks are still in use today for rail freight shipments, known both as Wheelspur yard to us cranks and the “LIC Freight Terminal” to it’s operator, the New York and Atlantic Railway.
The Fresh Direct building in particular was originally constructed by the Case Paper company. Case still exists, and has a witty history write up on their website. In their own words: “Once the war ended, the trio moved the business to Greenwich Village, where they remained until 1958, when they built a 100,000-square-foot warehouse and headquarters in Long Island City, NY. Here the company expanded not only its space, but also its business operations to include slitters, sheeters, and guillotine cutters (a more humane alternative for converting paper than the traditional paper gallows). “
Case moved out of their LIC warehouse sometime in the mid to late 1990s. The property was soon taken over by a new startup, Fresh Direct.
If not for good seed money, Fresh Direct would have folded a long time ago. Its first few years were turbulent, with many customers not placing repeat orders. While their prices were cheaper than most grocery stores in Manhattan, they couldn’t compete in the outer boroughs. They were also hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, which damaged their buildings and trucks. Better management, and a focus on building a solid customer base with better customer service ultimately saved the company and helped it thrive.
Moving On
In the 2012 they announced a deal to move to the Bronx. They originally threatened to move to New Jersey. The city, then under the leadership of Mike Bloomberg, blinked, and offered $100M in city tax breaks and cash. Talk about blackmail eh? Considering the tolls and traffic coming in from New Jersey, there was no chance that they ever intended to move out of NYC. It would have killed their revenues.
After a few years of community attempts to stop them & their polluting fleet of trucks from moving in, Fresh Direct finally relocated to the South Bronx in 2018. The transition hasn’t been especially smooth, and they left behind a warehouse full of conveyor belts, a few forgotten boxes of cereal, and a skeleton security crew.
Adventure Time:
So what was it like to explore this joint?
I really can’t go into detail on this one, but suffice it to say we got to spend a few hours in this place, shooting photos and documenting what was left. It was a fun adventure, to be sure.
The end was near, and getting to shoot and document this huge space was a delight. While the offices were vacant, the warehouse section of the building was still filled with a maze of storage racks, walkways and conveyor belts. This was an extremely modern facility. To see it so completely dormant and awaiting a wrecking ball was surreal.
Post-Mortem
The future of this location is a well kept secret at the moment. The new owners have a small hint on their website: “The Property Will be transformed into one of New York’s most state-of-the art last-mile distribution facilities designed to service the area’s growing e-commerce market.” (accessed March 2020). There must be some major player big money behind whatever gets built on this site, considering it sold for $75M in 2018. As with many properties in NYC, this one was actually bought for $45M a just three years before, in what was at the time a “record breaking sale“. This property flipping is the norm in NYC, though one really has to wonder what’s behind these crazy numbers.
Today, Fresh Direct is trying to sell itself, maybe to Walmart or Amazon. Color me surprised.
The Rona
Immediately after demolition was complete, the Corona Virus outbreak took place. One week after all ‘non-essential’ workers were ordered to stay home, the Fresh Direct site appeared to have been targeted by thieves. The normally well secured site was left wide open. I didn’t enter, keen on not being accused of anything I know nothing about—though it was rather clear from the complete lack of security and cut chain on the ground that someone looted something from here.
In the end, I’m sad to see this place go. Such a large modern food distribution building could easily have been reused by some other company. Fresh Direct never took advantage of the rail siding on the rear of the building, which could have reduced some of their costs (in fact, two of the transload customers in Wheelspur use the tracks for transporting food goods).
Home food delivery services will likely become significantly more popular post Covid-19. At the moment, Fresh Direct doesn’t even have food delivery availability. Imagine if their old facility was still available to open more capacity?
While the developer could not have known the virus was going to hit (demolition began late last fall), it’s hard to imagine such a complete structure could not have been reused by someone else, especially right now. Demolition began the moment Fresh Direct left. It seems no attempt to reuse this building took place.
Perhaps the developer will replace it with a bigger food distribution hub? Maybe Amazon is planning to build here and compete with Fresh Direct? Whatever the plans for this now empty, industrial zoned lot are, they remain (for the moment) a mystery. Hopefully it gets reused for an actual NYC infrastructure need, and not more office space or overpriced apartments.
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Hi
I was a weights and measures inspector for nyc and checked the scales there at least three times.Usually they had about 90+ scales to inspect.Part of the facility was for kosher food and a rabbi had to watch me test the those scales.Other rooms were loaded with melted ice on the floor and other rooms had conveyor belts with lines of workers feeding the wrapped food into the scale/conveyor belt system.The place was amazing and the workers were extremely friendly.Very clean for an operation of its size.I had to be careful inspecting the conveyor scales since they had moving parts. Thanks for the pics
Hi I’m surprised they demoed that building I installed the fire sprinkler system in that building and it had a lot of state of the art equipment in it also I believe it had one of the largest walk in cooler boxer in the country it really was a massive structure with large mezzanines and tons of conveyor belts sad to see that building go and to top it all off I witnessed 9/11 as it happened on top of the roof of fresh direct Mike Shapiro
Wow Mike that’s incredible. Thank you for sharing. Yeah by the time I got to take a look around the place, most of the conveyor belts were still in place but the higher tech stuff they must have hauled off to the Bronx.
The entire site has been cleared now, and last I heard they’re building some logistics warehouse there.