More than two years after it closed, the Calistoga Beverage plant on Silverado Trail is for sale.
The plant has been vacant and available for lease, but it has recently been listed for sale for $11.5 million.
Santa Rosa real estate agent Ken O’Farrell, who is handling the listing, referred calls to Nestle Waters North American, which owns the Calistoga Mineral Water plant and brand. A representative of the company did not return calls before The Weekly Calistogan’s deadline.
The 125,000-square-foot building is zoned for light industry. It has extensive office space, large open production and storage areas, and 12 bays for large trucks. It is largely not air-conditioned, but that could be installed by a new owner.
“Whether for purchase or lease, the highest and best use for that property is a wine servicing operation,” said Chamber of Commerce Executive Chris Canning, who also happens to have been the director of the plant before it closed.
The plant is perfectly suited to serve as a warehouse, a bottling facility, or even a full-blown wine production facility, he said.
Under the city’s zoning code, the building could be used for wine operations, food production, pharmaceutical production or research, utilities, paper printing and production, or general storage and warehousing.
Several potential tenants have inquired through the chamber, Canning said, but none have seemed particularly serious.
“One of the largest challenges with that facility, and one of the reasons Nestle got out, is that it is so remote from major highways, major modes of transportation,” Canning said.
That’s why wine-related uses might make for good tenants, he said, since the industry in Napa Valley is already adjusted to the relatively remote nature of most of the county.
It’s possible the building could become home to several different uses. The real estate listing suggests that the building would be sold whole, but it is also still available for partial lease, at an asking rate of 65 cents per square foot. The warehouse and production area could be subdivided into as many as four separate operations. There are two smaller office suites that could be rented separately as well.
Canning said his most recent conversations with Nestle suggest they intend to keep producing and selling the Calistoga brand bottled water, whether they own the building or not. The Nestle company continues to draw water from the wells on the property, bottling it in Healdsburg and selling it under the Calistoga name.
Canning said the plant, which was built in the early 1980s, would be an unusual find for any buyer or renter.
“That building could not be built today” given the cost of Upvalley land and tighter requirements for zoning and permitting.
The plant, which at its height employed more than 100 people, closed in the winter of 2009 after a year of layoffs.