Freezer plant is sold to investor group By Vicki L. Gerdes , Detroit Lakes Newspaper Published Friday, March 01, 2002 It was just under two years ago that the 68,000 square-foot freezer plant on Detroit Lakes’ Roosevelt Avenue was put up for sale by owners Milton Swedberg and Swedberg Investments, according to local realtor Jack Chivers. On Wednesday, the “Sold” signs that stood facing the street along the property’s edge became a reality, when Lakes Cold Storage, LLC, purchased the 13-year-old facility. Lakes Cold Storage is a four-way partnership formed by brothers Delta and Dave Daggett of Frazee (who jointly purchased a quarter interest); Gary Davis and Jim Lehr of Wadena, and a “private investor” from St. Cloud, according to Delta Daggett, who is listed as the partnership manager. “We’ve known the building was for sale for a couple of years,” said Daggett on Thursday. “A couple of us had talked about (purchasing) it, off and on. “We finally decided to go ahead and pursue the purchase.” According to Chivers, whose real estate firm handled the sale, the entire process took “about 45 days.” During that process, J & B Wholesale & Distribution of St. Michael approached the Daggetts (whose trucking company ships J&B’s products, according to that company’s web site) about leasing space in the facility. “They called and asked if they could be one of our customers, and ended up being the only customer,” Daggett said. “They will be operating the plant.” According to Michael J. Altimari, project manager for J & B Group (which includes J & B Wholesale & Distribution as well as J & B Cold Storage), the company’s interest in the Detroit Lakes facility was piqued by its size and condition. “With the growth of our business, it was a good fit to lease space to handle our increased storage space needs,” he added. “It’s a very unique piece of property,” Chivers pointed out. When it was built 13 years ago, it was a “state of the art” facility, with 1.77 million cubic feet of refrigeration space, situated on 4.5 acres of land just north of the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad tracks on the west side of Roosevelt Ave. It also has four truck loading docks, he added. “We also travel to Fargo multiple times in a week, so the location, as a back-up storage (building) for our main distribution facility in St. Michael made this location user-friendly,” Altimari continued. The “primary use” for the building will be as “excess storage” for J & B’s St. Michael facilities, he said.“As space allows, we will lease out space for public cold storage,” Altimari added. May 1 is the scheduled “move-in” date for J & B.” Between now and then, the building’s new owners will be busy “bringing the refrigeration system back on line, doing a thorough cleaning and making any necessary repairs.” “This will be a USDA-inspected facility,” Altimari said. “We look forward to operating in the Detroit Lakes community.” J & B Group, Inc., is most well known as the parent company of “No Name Steaks.” It also distributes “Midwest Pride”-brand value-added meat products. Both brands, introduced in 1993, are now available in 11 states, including Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and parts of Illinois, Kansas, Michigan and Missouri. Established in 1979, the privately held company began as a distributor of meat products to retail grocery stores and meat markets. J & B Wholesale Distribution sells and ships an average of 3 million pounds of meat and meat products every week, and is one of the largest meat distributors in the upper Midwest. The company’s food service sales and private label production produce an average of 25,000 pounds of steaks daily, using high-quality beef contracted from one of the “big three” beef packers in the country — Excel, IBP and Montfort. The size of its cold storage facility in St. Michael is 94,000 square feet, and its fleet includes 41 tractors and 65 trailers.