Coke closing its Marysville facility

Published 9:02 am Friday, September 3, 2010

MARYSVILLE — Striking Coca-Cola workers are back at the bargaining table, but that won’t save the company’s Marysville plant.

Bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. will close its sales and distribution centers in Marysville, Aberdeen and Bellingham on Sept. 17, officials said Wednesday.

Spokesman Bob Phillips said the move is a realignment of workers and won’t cut jobs. There are 53 employees in Marysville.

“We’ve offered employment to all of our union employees, and we may be adding a few more at the remaining facilities,” he said.

Coca-Cola Enterprises has other facilities in Bellevue, Bremerton, Tacoma, Fife, Wenatchee, Moses Lake, Spokane and Omak.

Phillips said the company began re-evaluating its network several years ago when the city of Marysville offered to buy its Marysville center. The city did buy the property and the company has been leasing it on a short-term basis.

City Administrator Gloria Hiroshima said the plant, at 7610 47th Ave. NE, would have been used to house the public works department as part of a plan to develop a new downtown government campus. That plan has been shelved because of the poor economy, she added.

Phillips said the sale in 2007 sparked the company to decide what to do next.

“We explored several options that included construction of a new facility,” Phillips said. “With the current economic conditions and the cost of rebuilding, we also looked at realigning the territory in Washington state.”

Hiroshima noted that the city had expected Coca-Cola to build a new facility and that it when it learned “very late in the negotiations” that it was thinking of realigning its plants, it offered to “step out if they would consider not realigning.”

She said the city now will look to leasing the building to another tenant.

Phillips said the company chose to realign to “take full advantage of our current properties.”

Coca-Cola Enterprises union workers went on strike Aug. 23, saying among the issues was a proposed significant increase in health care premium costs.

The company canceled health insurance for the strikers, which led them to decide to return to work on Tuesday.

Phillips said negotiations began Wednesday and were scheduled to continue today.

“We were pleased they returned to work and we’re glad to have them back at the bargaining table,” he added.