Giant Eagle takes over operations at Solon cold-storage warehouse

This article was updated at 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24, to include comments from Giant Eagle and Lineage Logistics.

Giant Eagle, the main occupant of a sprawling cold-storage warehouse in Solon, has taken over operations at the 360,000-square-foot facility.

On Thursday, Jan. 20, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services posted a notice on its website about a mass layoff at the complex. But 233 workers did not actually lose their jobs, a city official said.

Instead, building owner and prior operator Lineage Logistics transferred those employees over to Giant Eagle, the Pittsburgh-based grocer that has long used the space to store frozen foods and bakery items.

“It’s like an official thing they have to do,” Angee Shaker, Solon’s economic development director, said of Lineage Logistics’ obligation to notify the state under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. “They lay them off, but Giant Eagle hires them the very next day.”

A human resources representative at the warehouse, at 6531 Cochran Road, also confirmed that transfer to Giant Eagle. She referred detailed questions to the facility’s general manager, who did not return a phone call.

Lineage Logistics will continue to own the property.

“Earlier this month, we reached an agreement with our longtime customer, Giant Eagle, to lease the facility from us,” the company wrote in an emailed statement late Monday, Jan. 24. “As part of that transaction, Giant Eagle agreed to hire more than 240 of Lineage’s team members who work in the facility.”

The grocer also confirmed the broad strokes of the arrangement.

“Giant Eagle is excited to have officially taken over operations of the cold-storage facility in Solon, Ohio, and to welcome all 200-plus facility workers to the Giant Eagle family,” the company’s emailed statement read. “For an extended period of time, Giant Eagle had been the prior operator’s primary customer. It made sense for Giant Eagle to transition operational oversight to ensure that we can deliver the type of employee experience our team members have come to expect and, in doing so, to ensure that the goods that flow through the facility make their way into our stores and into the homes of our guests.”

Representatives for Teamsters Local 400, which represents 70% of the warehouse workers, declined to comment. “They have been advised not to talk about it,” said a woman who answered the phone at the union’s offices.

The state filing indicates that the employment transition occurred Jan. 15. The letter is dated Nov. 9, but it did not appear in the state’s online database of layoffs and plant closures for more than two months.

The city learned about the operator switch in early November, Shaker said.

Lineage bought the facility a year ago as part of a larger acquisition of Great Lakes Cold Storage, a Northeast Ohio company that had operations in Solon and western Pennsylvania. The purchase price for the Cochran Road complex was $26 million, according to public records.

At the time, former Great Lakes owner and president Patrick Gorbett told Crain’s that he had only one customer in Solon — though he would not identify that client.

“I can’t give you the name, but we are 100% dedicated to the largest grocery chain in Ohio and western Pennsylvania,” he said. “That’s all we do.”