Warehouse

Acme Markets intends to build a 1.4-million-square-foot warehouse and distribution complex near Reading, worrying leaders of the union that represents the company's warehouse workers in Philadelphia. Acme, operated by American Stores Inc., has two warehouses in Philadelphia that together employ about 750 in about 1.1 million square feet, according to Jim Brennan, president of the warehouse workers' union, Teamsters Local 169. The local, fearing that Acme plans to move those operations out of the city, will hold an informational meeting this morning at its headquarters.

Business was going so well for a marijuana-growing operation in a North Philadelphia warehouse that James Alberts and Richard K. Creamer decided in June 2009 to expand their business to northern California, authorities said. But their plan to purchase land there never happened because federal agents took down the operation the next month and arrested 10 people, all of whom have since pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy and related offenses. A federal grand jury yesterday charged Creamer, Leo Alberts, and Derek Pitts in the conspiracy to grow and distribute 1,000 marijuana plants, and related offenses.

On 1,200 acres of Philadelphia waterfront, where some of the Navy's most historic ships were built, a fleet of another sort will soon make what Anthony Bucci hopes will be a high-impact entrance. And not just because of the noise coming from the tailpipes. RevZilla.com L.L.C., an online motorcycle-gear retailer created five years ago by three friends wanting to indulge their proficiency with technology and love of bikes, will move to Philadelphia Navy Yard in February. It will leave its 35,000-square-foot, low-profile headquarters in an old South Philadelphia toy factory on Jackson Street and bring something novel to the business campus redevelopment site along the Delaware: shopping.

9 tonight SYFY When an artifact meant for the Warehouse turns up in a small town, the team finds itself in a B-movie meltdown with cowboys, gladiators, sci-fi robots and beach-storming Marines. Eddie McClintock (right) and Joanne Kelly (left) star.

A five-alarm fire engulfed a warehouse and four condominium apartments in Margate just before dawn yesterday, destroying the homes of four families and slightly injuring a police officer. The Atlantic County prosecutor was investigating the cause of the fire, which broke out about 5:35 a.m. in a construction warehouse at 108 N. Decatur Ave. A man from the warehouse ran up to Police Sgt. Edwin McMeekin and asked for help in evacuating two other men, who were sleeping in a small room in the warehouse.

About 60 elderly tenants of the Cooper Valley Village Condominiums complained to the Edgewater Park Township Committee last night of being awakened in the early morning hours by noise from a nearby warehouse operation. Barbara Horowitz, president of the condominium association, said she had received complaints from residents over the last seven months about Safety Kleen Inc. of Mount Holly, which leases an adjacent Bridgeboro Road warehouse and uses the building as a distribution center for industrial cleaning supplies.

A development plan for a 40,000-square-foot warehouse on Hansen Access Road won unanimous approval from the Upper Merion supervisors Monday night. The warehouse is part of a larger proposed development that includes a 192- unit apartment complex in the Abrams Run section of the township. The apartments proposal was on the agenda of last night's Planning Commission meeting. The warehouse property, on 5.2 acres, and the residential parcel are owned by the Gambone Bros. Development Co. of Fairview Village.

Citing concerns for health and safety, two area congressmen want to put $9.7 million in the next federal budget to build a warehouse for flammable materials at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Reps. Thomas M. Foglietta (D., Pa.) and Curt Weldon (R., Pa.) this week asked the subcommittee on military installations and facilities of the House Armed Services Committee to authorize $9.7 million in fiscal 1990 to replace a 50-year-old storage building. They said the warehouse, which holds flammable materials such as paints, solvents and metal cleaners, poses a threat to the environment because it is next to a basin that flows into the Schuylkill and, ultimately, the Delaware River.

There is no greenhouse at the Plant Outlet in Bala Cynwyd. The large stock of house plants is crowded into a nearly windowless warehouse where most of the illumination comes from overhead fluorescent lights, rather than daylight. Also missing is the controlled humidity usually found in greenhouses. The Plant Outlet's owner, Harvey Oxenfeldt, views all this as an advantage. His plants are already accustomed to the conditions in a home or office, which are vastly different from those in the greenhouses where house plants are grown.

NEWTOWN, Conn. - Chris Kelsey is the tax assessor in Newtown, but for the better part of three weeks, his job has been setting up and organizing a warehouse to hold the toys, school supplies, and other gifts donated in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Despite the town's pleas to stop sending gifts, Kelsey said trucks have been arriving daily with tokens of support from across the world, some for the families of those killed, others for the children of Sandy Hook, still others for the town.

NEWTOWN, Conn. - Christmas is gone, and with it the satellite trucks, and now the residents of this most famous small town in America are left with tens of thousands of teddy bears that they don't know what to do with. Mountains of plush stuffed animals - some the size of grizzlies - await itemizing and boxing in a warehouse just east of Main Street, where the highest flag in town now flies at full-staff. Two weeks after the mass shooting at nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School, nearly a week after the streets were jammed with hearses and funeral processions, Newtown is digging itself out from an avalanche of altruism.

J ULIE HOLAHAN, 49, and her husband, Michael, 54, of Elkins Park, have owned Pennsylvania General Store since 1987. The business, which sells local food products, is now a combination 750-square-foot retail space at the Reading Terminal Market and a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in Manayunk, home to a mail-order business that produces $2 million in annual revenues. Q: How have you stayed viable? A: By taking care of the customer. The answer is always "yes," then, "What's the question?"

On 1,200 acres of Philadelphia waterfront, where some of the Navy's most historic ships were built, a fleet of another sort will soon make what Anthony Bucci hopes will be a high-impact entrance. And not just because of the noise coming from the tailpipes. RevZilla.com L.L.C., an online motorcycle-gear retailer created five years ago by three friends wanting to indulge their proficiency with technology and love of bikes, will move to Philadelphia Navy Yard in February. It will leave its 35,000-square-foot, low-profile headquarters in an old South Philadelphia toy factory on Jackson Street and bring something novel to the business campus redevelopment site along the Delaware: shopping.

A four-alarm fire raging in South Philadelphia may put a serious damper on New Year's celebrations in the City. A blaze broke out shortly after 2 p.m. at a warehouse rented by one of Philadelphia's preeminent Mummers organizations. At Second and Wharton Streets, more than 120 firefighters from 33 companies battled the fire in the building where the celebrated Fralinger String Band stored its equipment. Men from Fralinger stood at the scene as huge plumes of thick black smoke billowed from the three-story structure's roof.

A Burlington County man pleaded guilty Thursday to defrauding a children's charity of more than $100,000, federal prosecutors said. Sean J. Smith, 38, of Mount Holly, admitted he stole $101,927 from Clothes for Kids Inc. by collecting pay for jobs that were not filled while Smith was director of operations at a warehouse used by the charity. Smith faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 21. - Robert Moran

WITHOUT hesitation, former Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Roger Ulshafer said that if he had to describe the emergency management of the Kensington warehouse blaze that claimed the lives of two firefighters in April, it would be "disgraceful. " Ulshafer made the statement during a City Council committee hearing Thursday to determine if proper safety controls were in place when a five-alarm fire destroyed the Thomas W. Buck Hosiery building. Lt. Robert Neary and firefighter Daniel Sweeney, of Ladder 10, died after a wall on a nearby building fell on them.

Results confirmed in Mexican vote MEXICO CITY - Mexico's highest electoral authority declared Friday that Enrique Pena Nieto was the legitimate winner of the country's July 1 presidential election, formally opening the transition to a new government despite continuing claims of fraud by the second-place candidate. The Federal Electoral Tribunal said leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had failed to prove claims that vote-buying affected the results of the election. Lopez Obrador told reporters Friday that he refused to recognize the results of the election and was calling for a peaceful protest Sept.

THE JOE PATERNO statue has been removed and, reportedly, is stored in a warehouse somewhere. What now? Lawrence Nowlan has an idea. The man who sculpted the Harry Kalas statue that sits inside Citizens Bank Park, wants to recycle the JoePa statue. Specifically, he wants to melt down the bronze and recast it as part of a healing fountain in remembrance of victims of child sex abuse everywhere. Nowlan, who resides and works in Windsor, Vt., graduated from Archbishop Carroll and Millersville.

Fire tore through a vacant warehouse on the border of Northern Liberties and Fishtown early Tuesday, destroying the building, injuring one firefighter, and leading SEPTA to suspend service along the Market-Frankford El during the morning commute. The firefighter, who was not identified, was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital after hurting his back in a fall. He was released Tuesday afternoon, Executive Fire Chief Richard Davison said. The four-alarm blaze broke out a few blocks from the Piazza at Schmidts in Northern Liberties, which has become one of the city's thriving areas for nightlife and apartment-dwellers.