Atlantic Coca-Cola Bottling Company is selling its central Iowa distribution center in Waukee and expanding into a vacant building on the south side of Des Moines. Kirk Tyler is chairman and C-E-O of the company. “We would fit about five of the Waukee facilities inside the building on the south side,” Tyler says.

This expansion comes after the family-owned firm acquired the rights to distribute Coca-Cola products in northern and eastern Iowa last October. Tyler expects to hire about 20 new employees to work in the larger space. “We’ll have about 290,000 square feet of warehousing space and about 80,000 square feet of office space,” Tyler says, “of which we have a tenant for part of that.”

Tyler’s family distributes Coca-Cola products to 90 percent of Iowa as well as parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri. The central Iowa warehouse along Highway 6 in Waukee has become a congested area, with a suburban HyVee store at the same intersection. The company’s new location on the south side of Des Moines has ready access to the Highway 5 bypass which connects to both Interstates 35 and 80.

“Because we go down into the Ottumwa territory and over to the Quad Cities, if we were going to build a new facility or move into a different facility, businesswise it just made sense,” Tyler says.

July 31st is the target date for making the move from company’s Waukee facility to the four-times-as-large building on the south side of Des Moines. The company operates from eight Iowa locations. Company headquarters is in Atlantic.

(Radio Iowa)