The Port of Pasco is hoping Darigold will sell a sliver of the land its new processing facility sits on north of Pasco so the port can provide rail access to a neighboring lot at its Reimann Industrial Center.

Port officials told the port’s commissioners during their Jan. 14 meeting that cold storage provider Cold Summit, which has bought two lots at Reimann, reached out in recent weeks to say it would need rail access at Lot No. 3, the initial lot it purchased, to meet the needs of its future tenant.

“The port had not planned to bring rail to Lot No. 3. The lack of access to rail services puts this project at risk,” Stephen McFadden, the port’s director of economic development and marketing, said in a memo.

Port commissioners unanimously agreed to extend Cold Summit’s feasibility period for the lot to give the port time to reach out to Darigold about a possible solution that would involve acquiring an easement across the dairy cooperative’s lot.

Cold Summit agreed to buy Lot No. 3 in April 2025 for $4.5 million. While detailed plans for its future facility haven’t been released, one of the company’s two facilities in Dallas was built on a similarly-sized parcel of land in 2021. It is 343,000 square feet and cost about $60 million to build.

Then in mid-December 2025, the company agreed to buy another 41-acre site at Reimann for nearly $6.2 million in mid-December. That latest deal brings Cold Summit’s total investment in the community to $290 million, along with the eventual creation of 200 permanent jobs at its yet-to-be-built facilities.

While Reimann is the state’s first BNSF Railway-certified rail site, not all areas of the industrial park were planned to have rail access. And while Cold Summit was aware of the lack of planned rail access at Lot No. 3, the primary tenant for its future facility on that lot has notified it requires rail service to move its product.

McFadden told port commissioners that HDR Engineering, the port’s rail engineer, would develop a draft solution that could provide rail to Lot No. 3 as part of the planned build-out of rail at Reimann. That solution requires two acres of land on Darigold’s lot.

The port does not yet know whether Darigold would be willing to provide the acreage and, if so, at what cost. If a deal can be reached, McFadden said the port would own the rail easement while Cold Summit would be responsible for the rail construction.

“Not much moves fast with a large food processor with a lawyer in Seattle,” McFadden told commissioners during the meeting, adding that he anticipates it taking up to six months to make a deal.