Johnson County city to build industrial park with 6 new warehouse facilities
More warehouse jobs will come to Olathe as the city continues to increase its industrial footprint — unanimously approving the most recent addition during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Aspen Industrial Land Fund I LLC requested that the city rezone 98 acres of property southeast of 167th Street and Hedge Lane from rural to industrial. The project includes over 1 million square feet of total floor area across six industrial buildings that will be developed for “speculative warehouse and distribution users,” according to the city staff report.
Occupants for the warehouses were not identified at this time, and the applicant intends to develop the lots in phases based on demand.
The site is surrounded by the Fed-Ex distribution facility, the new Coca-Cola bottling plant, and the cold storage facility used by Tyson Foods operated by Lineage Logistics, a current applicant for another industrial facility just two miles down the road.
The global food cold storage company recently proposed a 146-acre cold storage facility with 24-hour operations on West 175th Street and Loan Elm Road. The project caused uproar for residents in a neighborhood just a half mile from the project site.
Neighbors shared concerns about Lone Elm Road’s safety with 24-hour semitruck activity and environmental health concerns after Lineage’s actions in other cities around the country.
Olathe’s governing bodies unanimously greenlit Aspen Industrial’s project, but the Planning Commission denied Lineage’s proposal during its Aug. 11 meeting, siding with the neighbors and said that the company needs to address roadway safety concerns and put more safety measures in place. The Lineage project will still head to City Council at a later date.
While they are both large warehouse projects, Lineage’s proposal has residential neighbors and Aspen’s is already in an established industrial area — meaning not as many neighbors would be directly impacted by the activity.
It’s unclear how many jobs would come from both the Lineage and Aspen projects, but it follows momentum of warehouse jobs coming to the Johnson County city.
This summer, Walmart announced that it’s bringing more than 600 jobs to Olathe with the opening of its case-ready Angus beef facility.
The Olathe City Council last year also approved incentives for a massive industrial and residential development off of U.S. 169 Highway — which would build 13 warehouses on 247 acres of land. Project officials estimated that the warehouses would create 200 jobs in the first year and more than 1,000 jobs within the next 10 years.
Alongside Aspen’s proposal and its neighbors, Olathe is home to the Frito Lay Warehouse, the ALDI Distribution Center, Dillard’s Distribution Center, a Pepsi Beverages warehouse, and Garmin International Inc.’s warehouse.