Face Rock Creamery was welcomed by more than 1,000 people, who in mid-May came through its doors on opening day in Bandon, Oregon. “This is a 14-month project and we completed it in six months and 15 days,” Daniel Graham, construction supervisor and vice president, told reporter Amy Moss Strong of the Bandon Western World.
The Bandon Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting and the creamery treated visitors to food outside the facility as well as cheese samples inside, Strong reported.
According to the newspaper, creamery president Greg Drobot said he used his own and private money to finance the $2.2 million, 8,000 square-foot facility on land owned by the city of Bandon and leased to the creamery. The city also paid to construct the public restrooms adjacent to the building.
Drobot said he was able to fund the venture because of loans from Craft3, the Port of Bandon Economic Development Fund, the Oregon Business Development Fund and Coos Curry Douglas Development Corp.
“There was a lot of teamwork to get this together,” he told the newspaper.
Cheese production was once big business in Bandon, but halted in 2000, a couple of years after the Tillamook County Creamery Association purchased the former factory. The building was demolished in 2002.
Two years ago, the city purchased the lot from Tillamook using urban renewal money with the idea it could attract a developer to build a new cheese factory. Groundbreaking took place in August 2012, with construction beginning in October. PD
—From a report by Amy Moss Strong in Bandon Western World
