The upshot: Crocs will temporarily occupy three buildings near the airport. When all is complete, Crocs will vacate one of those buildings.
“We expect to be in the ‘Saltwater’ building by the end of the year, with plans to have it fully operational by late summer 2022,” company spokeswoman Melissa Layton said.
At 750,000 square feet, Crocs’ new “Saltwater” building is “an investment to support Crocs’ continued and anticipated growth across its North American e-commerce, retail and wholesale channels,” the company said. “The building will ultimately serve as Crocs’ primary storage facility and fulfillment center for e-commerce customers across North America.”
When it opens, the Saltwater building will be one of the most automated facilities in the area, Crocs also said.
Crocs currently is relying on two buildings, the latter of which will be occupied only until Crocs builds its third structure. One building, dubbed “Nile,” will be vacated when construction of the latest building is complete.
The two buildings Crocs plans to permanently occupy will cover more than 1.25 million square feet.
Rob Tecco, senior director and general manager for Croc’s facility on Dog Leg Road, told the Dayton Daily in February that it was planning to break ground on the 760,000-square-foot expansion of its distribution center near the airport soon.
“We just got approval at the end of November to expand the campus,” Tecco said in February. “So here in the next, we’ll call it, in the next four to six weeks, you’ll see us break ground on our expansion.”
The Dayton Daily News first reported last November that NorthPoint was then planning two new logistics buildings near Dayton International Airport in the next two years.
NorthPoint founding partner and chief marketing officer Brent Miles told Dayton-Montgomery County Port Authority trustees in November that possible new jobs anchored at those sites could reach 300 to 600 in the next few years. Construction was scheduled to begin on both sites early this year.
Then a third new building spearheaded by NorthPoint was confirmed in January this year, raising the total of planned NorthPoint projects to three.
Joseph Geraghty executive director of the port authority, said Tuesday that the port authority is working with Kansas City-based NorthPoint on three board of trustees-approved projects in the area of the airport — what the port calls buildings “6, 7 and 8,” located on Dog Leg Road, Lightner Road and behind a Vandalia fire station near the intersection of North Dixie and Tuskegee Airmen Drive.
Construction of the building announced in January is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2022, with estimated total project costs of about $38.4 million, Port Authority documents indicate.
The port agreed in January to act as lessor of that building, agreeing to lease the project on a capital lease basis, a deal designed to allow for the exemption of state and local sales taxes on all materials purchased for construction of the building, resulting in an estimated savings of about $1.2 million.
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