A Chattanooga real estate firm that has redeveloped a number of manufacturing and urban properties across the South has purchased the Arcade Beauty manufacturing site on Amnicola Highway in Chattanooga and is preparing to redevelop the 10-acre property for other commercial and industrial use once Arcade vacates the property later this year.
Urban Story Ventures paid $11.5 million to acquire the Arcade buildings and property at 3720 and 3800 Amnicola Highway after Arcade Beauty announced in July it was closing the Chattanooga plant by April. Arcade, a 121-year-old company that started in Chattanooga and was long known for making fragrance and cosmetics test samples for magazines and advertising samplers, plans to soon shut down the Amnicola plant site where it has operated since 2010. Arcade is shifting production to its plant in South Plainfield, New Jersey, near its headquarters in New York.
Aracade is keeping a Chattanooga presence with its research and development laboratory moving to a site in the Enterprise South Industrial Park, but it is laying off most of its 84-person production workforce in Chattanooga.
“The plant closure will allow us to improve our asset utilization in North America and further reduce our fixed cost base,” Trevor Deighton, Arcade’s general manager for North America, said in the statement last year.