220,000-SF Food Warehouse to Make its Home in Cecil County

"Burris management's decision to locate in Cecil County reaffirms the strength of that region as an attractive location for warehousing types of businesses as well as other types of businesses," Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development secretary Aris Melissaratos notes in a prepared statement on the project. The new center will occupy a 30-acre site in the industrial park, which is zoned to accommodate light and heavy industrial, distribution, office and research developments.

While Burris is the first in the park, it is hardly the first big distributor in the immediate area. Located off I-95, the property sits adjacent to leading polypropylene producer Basell North America, and Gore-Tex fabric and fluoropolymer products producer WL Gore & Associates. NAI Emory Hill sold the 30-acre parcel to Burris for an undisclosed figure; NAI is currently in the process of determining a rate for marketing the acreage. "We would prefer to retain the property and develop it ourselves, but we would certainly entertain doing other deals like we did with Burris," NAI's Larry Dunkelberger tells GlobeSt.com.

Burris already has a location in Caroline County, MD, as well as two in Virginia, so Cecil County was not a shoe-in for the home of the new facility; Burris looked around at several sites before making a decision. In the end, both the state and the county did their part to persuade the company to locate in Cecil County. Maryland's DBED is supplying Burris with a $400,000 loan from the Maryland Economic Development Assistance Fund, and the county will provide a series of tax credits over the next decade.