Thomas Gounley

TGOUNLEY@NEWS-LEADER.COM

There's a vacancy in what is perhaps Springfield's most unique business environment.

Minnesota-based international food conglomerate Cargill ceased operations as planned Wednesday at its meat slicing and packaging plant in Springfield Underground — a series of buildings that are, as the name suggests, entirely below the surface, in the tunnels left by by a north Springfield limestone mining operation.

Daily, about 300 trucks enter the facility, and a rail line leads inside as well. The weather there never changes — it will be 58 degrees, whether summer or winter. The selling point is energy-efficiency, and, to some, security.

And there's not a great deal of tenant turnover. The last company to move out mixed and packaged protein powder.

"It's been four or five years," Springfield Underground President Louis Griesemer said.

How business went, well, under

If you turn off Kearney Street and drive down to one of Springfield Underground's two active vehicular entrances, you're actually heading into the result of the open pit limestone quarry started by Louis Griesemer's father, along with other partners, in 1946.

Back then, the site — now 3610 E. Kearney St., just east of where the road goes over Highway 65 — was about 2 miles outside of Springfield city limits, on what was then the main road through the area, Route 66. The limestone there was fairly close to the surface, making it an ideal site.

The first tunnels were dug in 1954, creating the open space that would pave the way for underground facilities. The first underground building was constructed in 1960, and the second — the first refrigerated space — was added in 1962, for Kraft Foods.

"We weren't the first to do it, I think, but there weren't that many [at the time]," Griesemer said of the move into underground storage.

Springfield Underground grew over the decades, as mining operations left more and more tunnels behind. Buildings within the tunnels were sometimes constructed as tenants came forward, and sometimes in anticipation of those who would. Around 1980, the space occupied hit the 1 million square feet mark. Today, that figure is about 2.2 million.

The mining process left massive 30 by 30-foot pillars of limestone every 50 feet inside — the result of a method known as room and pillar mining — and the buildings and roadways are spaced between them. The ceiling ranges from 27 to 45 feet high, and the floor is 100 feet — think 10 stories — below the surface, which is mostly used as farmland. In one spot, where the mined limestone was once hauled aboveground on a conveyor, the earth has been cut away all the way to the surface, providing some rare natural light.

Air shafts throughout the facility draw out the vehicle exhaust; giant yellow curtains are draped over tunnels that have yet to be developed.

Access for the general public is rare. School groups are sometimes given tours, and a 5-kilometer race ("the Caveman 5k") has been held some years, but it's usually just those associated with the businesses inside coming and going.

Springfield Underground (the company has the same name as the facility) is still mining limestone in the area; you can see the operation from Highway 65. In recent years, it's been producing about 300,000 to 350,000 tons, Griesemer said, although before the recession — when demand was higher — that figure was closer to 800,000.

Most of the limestone at the 500-acre site has been extracted, and Griesemer only expects to be mining there for another couple years, depending on market demand. The company has another 500 acres on the other side of the city, south of the airport, and there's 40 years worth of limestone there.

"As we finish mining this one, we'll transition out to that side," Griesemer said.

The tenants today

Fifty-three years after space in Springfield Underground was constructed for Kraft Foods, the company is still there.

Kraft, which has had a manufacturing plant elsewhere in Springfield for 75 years, directly or indirectly uses about 750,000 square feet — more space than any other tenant, Griesemer said. That's equivalent to about 13 football fields.

"All of our Springfield plant's refrigerated products go to the Springfield Underground for storage and are picked up for distribution there," Kraft spokeswoman Joyce Hodel said in an email. "Some products from other Kraft plants come to the Underground and are then combined with Kraft Springfield products to form full loads of shipments to go to customers in the middle part of the country."

The amount of Kraft products and ingredients in the Underground varies from week to week, but there's capacity for more than 40,000 pallets of product "and we generally utilize more than 75 percent of the space from month to month," Hodel said.

There's still some refrigeration needed to bring Kraft's space down to its preferred 36 degrees. But the company estimates it uses about 65 percent less electricity to get there than it would in a comparable warehouse aboveground.

Other Springfield Underground tenants include Dairy Farmers of America, Hiland Dairy, Jarden Plastics Solutions, medical records company EDCO and industrial and electrical supplies distributor Graybar. City Utilities operated a climate-controlled data center in the facility for more than a decade before selling it to Bluebird Network in December. About half of the 2.2 million square feet used by tenants today is refrigerated.

Cargill moved into its space in 2008, when the company acquired the assets of Willow Brook Foods.

While most tenants use the Underground primarily for warehouse and distribution space, Cargill had a meat slicing and packaging facility (the operations are moving to company facilities in Nebraska and Texas). So while the company's 125,000 square feet was only about 5 percent of the occupied space in Springfield Underground, the company's 118 employees accounted for many of those actually working regularly in the space.

Marketing a unique space

In January, right after Cargill announced it would cease its Springfield operations, about three or four food companies reached out to Springfield Underground for specifics on the space, Griesemer said.

Interested tenants need to work with Cargill, since the company's lease on the space actually runs until July 2016.

"If we find a tenant, we'll obviously try and shorten that up," Griesemer said.

Cargill's space is "a little unique," Griesemer said. The core of it, where the meat products were sliced and packaged, was a room encased in stainless steel, designed to be easily disinfected and to keep any possible contaminants out. That could be a major selling point for a company needing such a space, but wouldn't necessarily interest a client who wouldn't need it for that purpose.

"I've been doing these deals for a long time, and they do not happen fast," Griesemer said.

In addition to the vacancy created by Cargill, Springfield Underground has space that can be custom built for a tenant — a process that takes about six months. Theoretically, the mine has about 5 million square feet that could be leased, Griesemer said, although access could be an issue for some areas.

With about a dozen facilities, Missouri is one of the leading states in the underground real estate industry, largely thanks to its mining history and geological makeup — limestone deposits are often covered with a layer of shale, which prevents runoff water from entering old mines. In addition to Springfield Underground, local facilities include The Mountain Complex in Branson and an Americold Logistics facility in Carthage. SubTropolis, a facility in Kansas City which bills itself as "the world's largest underground business complex," has nearly 6 million square feet of space rented.

Griesemer, however, said he considers traditional above-ground warehouse facilities in Springfield his main competition, and that his rates are "usually price-competitive."

"The cost of constructing underground is usually less than an above-ground building. If you think about it, we've already got a roof and pretty much a shell building. All we have to do is put some walls and pave the floor and we're good to go."