Keene Lands C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc. Complex

April 1st, 2002
By Robert E. Koch and Dan Gearino for SentinelSource
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A $7-billion-a-year company is moving to Keene, bringing along at least 400 white collar workers and ending a six-month running battle between two neighboring communities.

In September, C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc. — the nation's third-larges grocery distributor – announced that it planned to build a new corporate headquarters in either Brattleboro or Keene by this December.

Citing rapid growth, C&S executives said the company had outgrown its present headquarters in Brattleboro. About 1,200 employees work in its administrative offices and warehouse on Putney Road.

While warehouse operations will remain in Brattleboro, administrative staff are bound for Keene; many of the company's top executives already live in the Keene area.

Collectively, they'll churn a white collar payroll in excess of $10 million into the pockets of local merchants and restaurateurs.

The Keene plan calls for a $15 million, campus-like complex on 44 acres in Black Brook Corporate Park between Route 12 and Summit Road.

The Keene complex will include:

A three-story, 120,000-square-foot office with room for up to 500 professional and clerical staff.

A 25,000-square-foot fitness center with tennis and basketball courts.

A second, 60,000-square-foot, three-story office building to be built later, if needed.

A 1,200-foot city-built access road running from Corporate Drive near Route 12 and crossing Black Brook at two locations.

An independently built day-care center on C&S property, leased to the city-government for $1.

Since last fall's announcement, Keene and Brattleboro have competed intensely for the headquarters. Brattleboro teamed up with the Vermont state government to put together a package of $1.9 million in tax credits, along with word that other credits could raise the total to $6 million.

While New Hampshire can't offer such tax incentives, Keene had the distinct advantage of having developable land available in a choice area. This month, Brattleboro Town Manager Jerome M. Remillard said if geography were the sole criteria in the C&S decision, Brattleboro would likely lose, since it lacked flat, developable land.

Meanwhile, Keene officials and community leaders moved forward with design work for the $1.1 million access road and preliminary plans for a $1.48 million, 8,000-square-foot building with room for 81 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

City officials say the center will help alleviate the city's chronic shortage of high-quality, affordable day care.

At the presentation, City Attorney Gerald J. Carney said the project meets the public-purpose requirement needed for bond issuance and that the complex would be included into an existing tax-increment financing district. In such districts, development-generated taxes pay off bonds, relieving taxpayers of the burden.

C&S was founded in Worcester, Mass. in 1918 by Israel Cohen — grandfather of current owner Richard Cohen — along with business partner Abraham Siegel. The company started out with a 5,000-square-foot, three-story warehouse in the city, manned by three warehouse workers.

C&S's business was to buy food, ship it and sell it to grocery stores. As the company grew, these basic functions remained essentially the same. What changed was C&S's geographic reach and the growing influence of grocery-store chains.

The company grew in Worcester through the 1970s, making frequent expansions into larger warehouse spaces. The continuing need for expansion made C&S look to move outside Worcester for a new, large warehouse space.

That new home, in 1981, was Brattleboro. C&S built a 300,000 square-foot warehouse there, intended to help the company appeal to large grocery chains, a strategy that worked, as A&P supermarkets and several other chains started doing business with C&S.

From there, C&S took off, becoming the largest employer in Vermont, and one of the largest grocery wholesalers in the country. The company now has warehouses throughout the northeast.