Focus will be avocados
San Francisco's first packing house since 90s
The company Allied Citrus and Avocado plan to open in a long-vacant packing house building: the property has two large buildings and a small office, totaling about 250,000 feet. One large building will open immediately as a packing house. Allied plans to turn the other into a cold storage facility, "a few years down the road," Tom Figg, a land use consultant to the city, told the Planning Commission.
Allied's 10-acre property was once the Saticoy lemon packing house. It is now mostly vacant, though part of it is used to warehouse airplane parts. When the Allied packing house opens, the jobs on the property will go from four to 79.
Fillmore once had numerous packing houses, serving the orange and lemon growers of the Santa Clara River Valley. But the orange industry in Ventura County has nearly disappeared, due to foreign competition and lower demand for oranges and orange juice.
Ventura County avocados, on the other hand, are thriving. Allied's owners are avocado and citrus growers in the Fillmore area, and the new packing house will handle both types of fruit, but the focus will be on avocados, said Williams Lindsay, a consultant to Allied on the packing house project.
The Fillmore Planning Commission voted 5-0 on Wednesday to allow the company to open. The Planning Commission's approval is the last one Allied needs, unless an opponent of the project appeals the matter to the City Council. That appears unlikely, as there hasn't been any opposition so far.
Source: vcstar.com
