Holly Poultry, Baltimore, Md., tapped Merritt Construction Services, the Baltimore, Md., construction arm of Merritt Properties, to build a ground-up, USDA poultry processing facility in Baltimore, Md. The new facility will allow Holly Poultry to expand its workforce, increase production and repurpose an obsolete industrial site.

Located at 2121 Wicomico Street, the new 37,500-square-foot building will allow Holly Poultry to separate its processing business from its wholesale commodity business, thus penetrating existing markets, exploring new markets and accelerating growth.

"For the past several years, Holly's growth has been hampered by lack of space,” says Zach Fine, vice president of Holly Poultry. “Now, working with Merritt, we are taking 17 acres of urban blight and turning it into a state-of-the-art processing facility."

Holly Poultry, a family-owned business, is a further processor of poultry products and a wholesale distributor of poultry, pork, beef and other refrigerated products.

Merritt already broke ground on the former Maryland Glass Corp. factory site where cobalt blue bottles and jars for Bromo Seltzer and Noxzema were produced until 1980 when Maryland Glass went out of business. The new poultry processing facility will repurpose the obsolete industrial site and give Holly Poultry the space needed to expand product offerings.

The expansion is expected to result in the hiring of an additional 100 full-time employees. This facility will also feature a new test kitchen, new equipment, including conveyors, marinating, sizing and deboning lines and pursue energy and environmental design in accordance with the Baltimore City Green Building Code.

The state-of-the-art USDA poultry processing facility is expected to be operational in January 2017.