Third-party logistics provider Toll Group will move into a Los Angeles warehouse after the warehouse’s former tenant was denied a lease renewal from the city.
The Port of Los Angeles approved Toll Global Forwarding to occupy a port-owned 85-acre container yard and 600,000-square-foot warehouse on the site. The site covers trucking and transload operations for approximately 9.5 million containers annually. Toll is expected to commence operating the site immediately, once the approval has been finalized.
The site, which handles a “considerable” amount of container volumes coming from the port, was occupied by California Transload Services, a subsidiary of California Cartage, which itself is owned by New Jersey-based NFI Industries.
Cal Cartage vacated the warehouse in August after the Los Angeles City Council voted down extending the lease on the facility after roughly 50 years of occupancy. The City Council vote was in response to repeated labor actions and protests as a Teamsters local attempted to unionize the site’s warehouse workers.
Toll Group, a subsidiary of Japan Post, will pay approximately $5.3 million annually in rent for the site.
The port approved a revocable permit with a maximum term of two years for the site as it sits within the proposed area for the BNSF-backed Southern California International Gateway intermodal rail yard. The project, though, remains dormant due to zoning issues.
Robert Charles, the U.S. head of Toll Global Logistics, said the new facility “is great news for our customers since we can now manage our customers’ products within the port, all the way to the retail outlets, ensuring the service quality from end to end.”
Toll said it plans to invest $1 million in modernizing the facility and employ more than 300 people at the facility.