ProLogis has bought Meadwestvaco Corp.’s former plant in Buena Park.
The 238,000-square-foot plant was sold to Denver-based ProLogis for about $20 million, according to sources.
Jessica Neal, a spokeswoman with ProLogis, declined to comment.
ProLogis is seeking permits to make over the building’s shell, according to May Hui, Buena Park’s economic development director.
The company also wants to make changes to the plant’s parking lot, Hui said.
“This is an opportunity to bring new industry to the city,” Hui said.
Since the plant was shuttered in late 2004, several companies had expressed interest in leasing the space. But they balked at committing to a long-term deal, Hui said.
About 135 workers lost their jobs in the plant’s closure.
The plant, which opened in 1968, produced paper cartons for packs of soda and beer. At peak production, the plant stamped logos on 1.5 million cartons per day for drinks makers.
It was shuttered as part of a $50 million cost-cutting at Meadwestvaco, which was looking to boost profits.
The Stamford, Conn.-based maker of packaging, office products and schools supplies also closed its Fullerton-based Day Runner Inc. unit in early 2004, cutting about 130 jobs.
The closure of the Day Runner operation came a few months after Meadwestvaco bought the calendar maker for $43 million.
ProLogis isn’t expected to tear down Meadwestvaco’s Buena Park plant. The real estate investment trust, which owns, manages and develops industrial buildings, razed a nearby Kraft Foods Inc. Nabisco plant on Artesia Boulevard in Buena Park in the 1990s.
The industrial developer put up ProLogis Park at the Mid-Counties Distribution Center at the Kraft Foods site. It totals more than 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space.
The Meadwestvaco plant is at 6400 Valley View Drive near the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway. The street runs along Buena Park’s border with La Mirada.
Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo SA last year closed a bakery on Valley View, just across the county line in La Mirada. Grupo Bimbo cited a consolidation of its California plants for the closure.
Bimbo Bakeries USA, the Fort Worth, Texas-based U.S. arm of Mexico City’s Grupo Bimbo, moved production from La Mirada to Montebello and Escondido.
Roughly a third of the La Mirada plant’s 130 workers took production and delivery truck jobs at other company plants. The rest of the workers were laid off.
Philadelphia-based Crown Holdings Inc., a maker of cans, caps and other packaging, recently closed a La Mirada plant.
Another big industrial loss was a second Nabisco plant in Buena Park that closed in 2004. Irvine-based Centra Realty Corp. bought the Kraft Foods Inc. plant and is under way with demolition at the site.
Centra is looking to put up some 300,000 square feet of shops, though plans have been in flux for the past year.
