October 24, 2017 – Lakeside Organic Gardens is putting the finishing touches on a massive new state-of-the-art cooler and shipping facility in Watsonville that will allow the company to keep up with the public’s growing appetite for healthy, organic produce.
The new 100,000-square-foot facility just off Riverside Dr. was designed by Lakeside owner Dick Peixoto, who also acted as master contractor, overseeing every step of the construction process.
“We made the whole design from start to finish,” says Peixoto. “It’s been a lifelong dream, in the thought process for at least 10 years and under construction for over a year.”
“It wouldn’t work for Driscoll’s or Dole, it’s designed just for our business and is going to make us much more efficient,” he adds.
Lakeside grows about 50 different varieties of vegetables on 1,500 acres in the Pajaro Valley and 1,000 acres in Imperial County. Getting locally-grown vegetables into the cooler quickly and then shipped out around the country without delay is key to its business.
The building is four times larger than Lakeside’s old cooling facility on Holohan Road, which will now be dedicated to bulk sales of vegetables bagged for juicing.
The new site includes a pressure tunnel for quick cooling and a 55,000 square foot cold room, with different temperature zones for different types of produce. It has eight truck bays, up from three at the old facility.
Peixoto designed three-story racks inside the cooler, where multiple orders can be assembled in advance and be ready to go. When trucks arrive, drivers relax in a dedicated lounge, where they can watch their truck being loaded via a video system installed at each loading bay.
“Drivers stay out of the loading area and out of the flow of traffic, so instead of taking an hour to load a truck it now takes only 15 minutes,” Peixoto says.
Solar panels are being installed on the roof of the building and expected to provide about a quarter of all power needs. A rainwater and cooling water catchment system is also being installed and water will be used to irrigate Lakeside’s fields right next door—which are currently planted with carrots.
The company is also growing organic artichokes this season for the first time, to be sold by Ocean Mist. And over the summer they conducted trials of triple sweet bi-color corn, which Peixoto said was getting rave reviews.
Next up is construction of the new company offices, currently housed in a series of portable trailers next to the carrot fields. Then another lifelong, legacy project gets underway on the property: Peixoto’s dream of creating an agricultural education center.
As reported in EMB last year (read article here), Lakeside has provided $2 million in seed money to fund the Peixoto Organic and Sustainable Farming and Education Center, with the aim of reaching children, beginning farmers and tourists.
“We want to teach kids at a young age about the opportunities in ag,” says Peixoto. “A lot of kids are taught that when they grow up they have to go off and work in Silicon Valley, but we want to show them that ag offers good quality jobs in warehouses, in water quality, in sales. You don’t have go over the hill.”
The educational facility will also act as a clearinghouse of information for the next generation of farmers, with resources on leasing land, buying tractors and how to get started.
Finally, he hopes to get tourists to come out to the farm. “We want to show them where their food comes from and how it is produced. We want to show them how we grow it, how we cool it and how it gets to their plates.”
Public tours of the fascinating new cooler are part of that educational plan.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
