BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Bethlehem Zoning Hearing Board approved a height variance request for a warehouse expansion Wednesday night at city hall.
The applicant, United States Cold Storage, plans a 99,267-square-foot cold storage warehouse expansion at 15 Emery St. in Lehigh Valley Industrial Park VII at the Bethlehem Commerce Center.
The applicant is seeking a variance to the 80-foot building height to allow for a 112-foot building height. The variance will allow the company to establish “a modern automation system” within the building’s expanded portion. The company has roughly 45,000 pallet cubes about 6 feet in height at the location.
“The automated process takes the employee out of the storage room completely,” Mitch Harper, general manager of the Bethlehem location said about the proposed automation system.
“Employees are still unloading pallets from trailers and loading pallets onto trailers,” Harper said, “but once they have that pallet, instead of placing it on the dock, waiting for a forklift employee to come grab that pallet, they place it onto a conveyor system.”
Harper said the 112 feet was the minimum height that would provide US Cold Storage an efficient operation, and it was closest to Bethlehem’s height requirement. The company plans to add 10 or 11 employees for the expansion, with the average employee earning about $64,000 annually.
“We have about 138 warehouse employees today,” Harper said.
An aerial view of the current cold storage facility shows the vacant land to the right, where the expanded portion of the warehouse is proposed.
The project also includes a truck access and gate house reconfiguration and additional parking, which the applicant says will improve truck traffic efficiency.
US Cold Storage representatives said the proposed redevelopment “is consistent with the previously approved land development,” and complies with all use and dimensional requirements in the city’s zoning ordinance.
The company is a third-party storage unit for frozen food products, and broke ground on the Bethlehem site in 2004, according to Harper.
“Customer demand is at an all-time high,” Harper said of the reason for the expansion.
The building operates 24 hours per day, five days per week, and has one Saturday and one Sunday 10-hour shift. Currently, the site welcomes 160 trucks per day.