CHEYENNE — A new 30,000-square-foot distribution center broke ground in Cheyenne on Thursday near the Swan Ranch Road exit off Interstate 25 and is slated to be completed in December.
Florida-based Earthcore is the sole manufacturer of Isokern fireplaces. The new distribution center is its fifth in the nation and will primarily serve the Northwest and upper Midwest. Earthcore CEO Carl Spadaro said the Cheyenne location was chosen primarily for interstate access and workforce availability.
The company currently rents out a 15,000-square-foot warehouse in Cheyenne, and this new facility will offer potential for growth in the future, possibly doing assembly at the location or renting some space out to other companies.
Isokern fireplaces are made from volcanic stone mined in Iceland and shipped to the United States.
The company assembles kit-form fireplaces at assembly sites and ships them to job sites to build a full fireplace or chimney system in a day. It is in its 36th year of operation in America and has around 600 distributors across the country.
The Cheyenne location will employ around 10 or 12 people.
The company often manufactures large fireplaces seen in restaurants or hotels, but Spadaro said they have quite a few customers who want these larger fireplaces in their home.
Cheyenne LEADS CEO Betsey Hale said making this possible was a team effort.
The groundbreaking event was hosted by the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce, LEADS led the public relations and communications, Laramie County-based Richardson Construction helped facilitate the land transaction and will lead the construction throughout the year, and Fort Collins, Colorado-based VFLA Architects and Interiors will carry out the design work.
“It’s really been a community effort. And I think that’s really important that people understand that economic development is a team sport,” Hale said.
Members of Cheyenne’s business community, including banks and real estate companies, were on hand to watch the groundbreaking ceremony. Several members of Earthcore’s administrative team flew in from Jacksonville, Florida, where the company is headquartered, to celebrate the groundbreaking.
At around 60 degrees outside and sunny with little wind, Spadaro joked that he brought some of the Florida weather with him to Wyoming for the day.
Hale, who was one of the people who ceremonially broke ground with a shovel, said she admired the company for being vertically integrated, creating products from raw materials mined outside of the United States and manufacturing it domestically.