The company that produces Kedem kosher wines and other products is working with a developer based in Boston to create a 635,050-square-foot manufacturing, warehousing and visitor facility in Orange County”™s Village of Goshen.
Royal Wine Corp., which is headquartered in Bayonne, New Jersey, has joined with Boston-based GFI Partners to propose the project to be located at 2500 New York State Route 17M in Goshen. They have submitted their application for the project through the entity Goshen Developer JV LLC. The application is being reviewed by the Village of Goshen Planning Board.
GFI, through the entity Goshen Property Owners LLC, purchased the property from Yidel Realty, which had obtained approvals for the construction of a 500,00-square-foot warehouse with 24,900 square feet of offices on the site. It had been estimated that the cost to construct the approved warehouse would be $40 million.
The site consists of 81.9 acres of land and is in the village”™s Industrial Park Zoning District. An analysis prepared for the developer takes the position that the uses being proposed are permitted “as of right.” Not all of the site can be developed since there are a total of 32.4 acres of federal- and state-regulated wetlands along with wetland sections that do not fall under either jurisdiction.
Royal Wine would consolidate some operations in Goshen from its Bayonne location as well as a site in Marlboro, New York. Distribution and warehousing facilities located in Newark and Pennsauken, New Jersey, would be closed.
Royal Wine Corp. bills itself as “the leading importer, producer and distributor of kosher foods, wines, spirits and liqueurs in the world.” It says that its product portfolio represents thousands of items from hundreds of brands around the world. The company”™s roots go back to the 19th century in Czechoslovakia where the Herzog family winery supplied wines to the emperor. The family”™s Phillip Herzog was awarded the royal title of Baron. Baron Herzog is one of the company”™s prominent brands.
Descendant Eugene Herzog moved his family to the U.S. in 1948, went to work for the Royal Wine Corp. and eventually became its majority shareholder.
In Ulster County”™s Town of Marlboro, Royal operates on 35 acres where grapes are grown and crushed and grape juice blended. There is a visitor center and tasting room at that location. It has long-term leasing arrangements in Canandaigua, N. Y., and Bakersfield, California, where it also processes grapes. Royal also operates an 80,000-square-foot winery, tasting room and restaurant in Oxnard, Calif.
The proposed Goshen facility would have five main areas: grape crushing and grape juice processing; bulk juice storage in the cellar; production and warehousing; office space; and a visitor center and tasting room.
In addition to the main building, there would be a grape pretreatment facility in a separate building of approximately 1,800 square feet. There would be 12 outdoor storage tanks along the easterly side of the main building that would be up to 46 feet tall. The maximum building height would be 56 feet, which would require approval from Goshen”™s Zoning Board of Appeals. In 2020, the board approved heights of up to 46 feet at the site.
The developer expects the facility would have approximately 100 employees for most of the year with about 15 additional part-time and five full-time employees added during the grape harvest period from August to October.
The developer anticipates that there would be approximately 100 visitors to the site each day. In addition to vehicular parking for employees and visitors, there would be two spaces for buses that would be expected to bring visitors to the site.
The developer projects that during harvest season it will need 20 spaces on the site for tractor trailers. It says that the trucks would arrive late at night and in the early morning hours and would be unloaded throughout the day at the grape-receiving area.
It”™s proposed that 271 parking spaces be provided with an additional 223 spaces available if needed by utilizing land that would be banked for the purpose.
The proposed visitor center is described as having space for guest services, wine tasting and retail sales. It will provide visitors with views of wine crushing, blending and bottling along with the ability to see the wine cellars. There would be a patio for outdoor seating and places where buses will operate to take visitors to see where Kedem grape juice is processed. The developer believes that, based on sales activity at its other visitor centers, the visitor center in Goshen would produce approximately $1.5 million in annual sales revenue.
The developer points out that many of the issues that typically would need to be studied during the review of an application already were sufficiently reviewed for the Yidel Realty warehouse plan. It says that buffer areas will protect land owned by the Orange County Audubon Society and that the traffic impact is not significantly changed from what had been found in studies done for the Yidel plan. It was pointed out that there would be no operations at the site beginning Friday afternoons and lasting through Saturday.
