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A rendering of the proposed 10,000 square-foot Sherwin-Williams warehouse on Route 113. | PHOTO COURTESY OF TOWN OF GEORGETOWN[/caption]
GEORGETOWN — Catering to a booming housing market, a developer is planning to build a small Sherwin-Williams warehouse to sell paint exclusively to contractors.
Plans filed by real estate developer and Fairfax Discount Liquors owner Bob Aerenson would build a 10,000-square-foot warehouse and a 6,000-square-foot office on U.S. Route 113 between Easterseals Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore and the future Post Acute Medical (PAM) Rehabilitation Hospital.
“The new facility … is designed to primarily serve our commercial paint customers working in and around Sussex County,” Sherwin-Williams Company Global Corporate Communication Vice President Julie Young said. “We identified a need to better serve our commercial paint customers closer to where they work.”
The warehouse will serve as a hub for Sherwin-Williams to sell gallons of paint to various painting contractors and firms, rather than a straight-to-consumer retail operation. In Georgetown, it’s a 23-minute drive to Seaford in the west and 45-minute drive south to Ocean City, Md. The warehouse will have five employees on site, and is projected to have tractor trailers deliver paint once a week, at the most.
“When you say distribution center, people think about Amazon. This is not that, it’s business-to-business,” Aerenson told the Delaware Business Times. “Sherwin-Williams is a large, successful company and they’re interested in targeting needs now and in the future in the region.”
Between April 2017 and May 2022, the county documented approximately 16,800 permits for single-family units alone. Of those permits that lay within the limits of a Sussex County municipality, Lewes, Millsboro, and Milton rank the highest when it comes to the number of single-family unit permits.
Sussex County’s population rose by 4% between 2020 and 2021, and it’s projected to continue growing as more people look to move closer to Delaware’s beaches as they retire.
Aerenson, who specializes in securing easements and entitlements for residential lots as well as working on several other Sherman William storefronts in the state, said the 6,000- square-foot second structure on the land will not be connected to the warehouse project. He is looking for a tenant, either for retail on the first floor and office on the second floor, or to use the entire facility as office space.
Construction on the warehouse is expected to start in the next six to eight months, with completion targeted for spring of 2023.
