Prominent downtown Kennewick property is on the market

A prominent Kennewick beverage plant is closing just six months after being purchased by a Florida foods manufacturer.

The J. Lieb Foods Inc. property, formerly the Welch’s juice plant, is on the market for $4.85 million with NAI Tri-Cities Commercial.

Refresco Beverage USA, based in Tampa, Fla., is reportedly relocating Kennewick operations to Walla Walla.

Refresco acquired the property in September when it paid $3.62 million for the real estate and $2.88 million for equipment, according to a tax affidavit recorded with the Benton County assessor.

The property is at 10 E. Bruneau St. and boasts nearly 210,000 square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space in five buildings occupying 7.5 acres.

It includes 56,000 square feet of cold storage, processing space for two bottling lines, a cafeteria, a food lab and an on-site well and offices.

Refresco officials were not immediately available for comment Tuesday. It was not clear what the closure will mean for the plant’s approximately 40 employees.

Best know as Welch’s plant

Prior to the Refresco purchase, the plant was most recently operated by J. Lieb Foods Inc., a Portland-area food packer.

To Tri-Citians, it is best known as the longtime home for Welch’s, a grape-growers’ cooperative that used it to produce and package grape juice.

Welch’s closed the plant in early 2006, five years after a $6.8 million upgrade. At the time, it said the Kennewick plant was too small to be cost effective.

It moved juice production to its larger plants, eliminating 165 jobs from downtown.

After Welch’s shut down, J. Lieb Foods purchased the property for $3.5 million.

The Oregon company operated it as a bottling plant and juice storage facility. It reportedly had been seeking a buyer for several years prior to closing the deal with Refresco.

It reported 58 employees in Kennewick prior to the sale.

The 1950-built plant is one of the largest commercial real estate offerings available in the Tri-City market.

That could help the site sell fairly quickly, said Carl Adrian, president of the Tri-City Industrial Council, or TRIDEC.

“The sad part is we lost J. Lieb. But on the economic development side, we’ve got a product we can market,” he said.

Gateway to downtown Kennewick

The location could be viewed as a key gateway between downtown Kennewick and the Columbia Drive corridor, where the Port of Kennewick is developing Columbia Gardens Urban Wine & Artisan Village. Columbia Gardens is a wine-themed project designed to spark redevelopment between the blue and cable bridges.

“If you’re going to go from Columbia Gardens to downtown, you have to walk right by it,” Adrian said.

The city too is hopeful the space won’t remain empty long after Refresco winds down. The property is in one of two “Opportunity Zones,” which reward investment with deferrals on capital gains taxes.

Evelyn Lusignan, the city’s spokeswoman, said the city’s economic development team is working with broker Derrick Stricker to draw attention to a property that once helped anchor downtown.

The plant is zoned for commercial use.

The federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 created the Opportunity Zone program to encourage business investment in underserved communities through tax incentives. Washington has 139 Opportunity Zone “tracts,” including two in Kennewick and one covering portions of Pasco.

This story was originally published March 19, 2019 at 4:53 PM.