Flooring retailer Floor & Decor announced it is expanding operations in eastern Baltimore County, adding a 1.3M SF lease at a warehouse under construction at Tradepoint Atlantic.
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The new lease swells Floor & Decor's footprint at Tradepoint Atlantic, a massive logistics campus on the site of a former steel manufacturing plant, to 2.8M SF. The company said it is adding 165 jobs with the expansion, bringing its workforce on the campus to 315 people.
The Atlanta-based retailer, founded in 2000, has more than 200 stores across the U.S., according to a release.
“This second distribution facility allows us to strengthen our commitment to deliver and maintain in-stock, job lot quantities of hard surface flooring for our customers throughout the Northeast," Bryan Dodge, Floor & Decor senior vice president of real estate, said in a statement.
Both the state and Baltimore County provided incentives to encourage Floor & Decor's expansion. The Maryland Department of Commerce approved an $825K conditional loan through Advantage Maryland. Baltimore County delivered an $82.5K conditional loan to help complete the project.
Floor & Decor is also eligible for sundry incentives and tax credits, such as the state's Job Creation Tax Credit and the Enterprise Zone Property Tax Credit.
“Floor & Décor’s decision to move ahead with a significant expansion and nearly double its workforce in Maryland shows our strength as one of the top distribution hubs in the Mid-Atlantic,” Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement.
During the last decade, the Tradepoint Atlantic team redeveloped and remediated the site on Sparrows Point, which served as home to various steel manufacturers dating back to the late 19th century.
The site symbolized Baltimore's industrial might in the 1950s when Bethlehem Steel oversaw the steelmaking operations. At that time, it was the largest steel manufacturing plant in the world.
In its latest iteration as Tradepoint Atlantic, the development team transformed the site into a global distribution hub. Tradepoint boosted its standing as a significant East Coast logistics hub last fall when it joined a joint venture with Terminal Investment Ltd. to build a 165-acre container facility with an on-dock rail facility at Coke Point.
