The Texas-based owner of the Meadow Gold Hawaii dairy processing plant in Honolulu is seeking to sell the property for $25 million after shutting down the facility in April.
Dean Foods Co. has retained local commercial real estate firm Cushman &Wakefield ChaneyBrooks to market the 2.15-acre site near the Walmart store in the Ala Moana area.
The listing is part of an effort by Dean Foods to repay debts in bankruptcy, and follows a failed agreement in April to sell the Honolulu plant to an investment firm that planned to continue dairy processing and distribution operations under the Meadow Gold name.
The plant’s April 30
closure affected 216
employees.
Dean Foods, which filed for bankruptcy in November, sold Meadow Gold’s other Hawaii operations — a processing plant in Hilo along with distribution facilities on Hawaii island, Maui and Kauai that employ 71 workers — for $7 million in April to a company led by Bahman Sadeghi, a former owner of now-defunct Foremost Dairies-Hawaii.
Sadeghi plans to expand the Hilo facility to serve the state with Meadow Gold products that include milk, butter, ice cream and Pog (passion-orange-guava juice).
Before Sadeghi made his bid, Dean Foods had arranged to sell all Meadow Gold Hawaii operations to Los Angeles-based Industrial Realty Group LLC for
$25.5 million. As part of that deal, Industrial Realty planned to continue Meadow Gold operations with a partner, 8 Cow Dairies.
After the Industrial Realty deal fell through, the company offered $19.1 million for Meadow Gold’s real estate with no intention to continue operating the only milk processor in the state.
Joe Haas, Cushman &Wakefield ChaneyBrooks managing director, said the Honolulu property occupying two blocks and a portion of a third block mauka of Walmart will likely attract buyers interested in developing high-rise housing, given the size and zoning of the land.
Anthony Provenzano, a Cushman &Wakefield ChaneyBrooks vice president, added that companies intending to use the property for their own operations also have expressed interest.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a manufacturing/distribution center of this size near Ala Moana,” he said in a statement.
Meadow Gold has had a presence in Hawaii since the early 1900s.
The last Meadow Gold dairy farm in the state closed in 2001, and since then the dairy producer has mostly imported mainland milk for processing and distribution.
Dean Foods had owned Hawaii’s oldest and biggest dairy products brand since 1999, initially through a predecessor.
Dean Foods was the nation’s largest milk processor and has been settling debts by selling its collection of businesses and brands across the country to a variety of buyers.