Family keeps a warm spot for freezing.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

With a twist, Pete Lafferty has arrived at the same conclusion as the beloved Jimmy Stewart character George Bailey: It really is a wonderful life.

Lafferty wasn't quite enthusiastic at first about following his father, Paul, into the family business. The elder Lafferty founded Eugene Freezing and Storage in 1957, and had designs on bringing his son into the fold a dozen or so years later.

"Right out of college, I had other ideas," Pete Lafferty says. "But Dad pulled a pretty smooth one. He said, 'How about staying around and helping us for the busy season?' Then after the summer was over, he'd say, 'Why don't you go to Europe and follow your brother through the ski season?' '

His brother, Mike, was a member of the U.S. Ski Team, a downhill specialist who eventually participated in the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.

Pete accompanied his brother to Europe and then returned just in time for Eugene Freezing's next busy season, putting up frozen goods for the southern Willamette Valley's fruit and vegetable processors. He was again pressed into service by his father.

"That happened a few years, and then I became a permanent fixture around here," Pete says.

Not that Eugene Freezing and Storage ever represented the kind of professional dead-end portrayed by Bailey's Savings and Loan in the film "It's a Wonderful Life."

It was a thriving business when Pete Lafferty was drawn into it nearly 40 years ago - his brother Mike followed him a few years later - and it has grown into a critical storage and distribution link for many of Oregon's food production and processing industries.

But, like George Bailey, Pete and brother Mike have spent their careers chasing a form of satisfaction with a little less flash than the world-beating dreams of youth. And they haven't regretted it for a minute.

"I guess when you're younger, you always think about doing something different," Mike Lafferty says. "By the time I got around to where I was going to work full-time, this looked like a good opportunity."

Originally built as a 17,000-square-foot frozen food warehouse, Eugene Freezing was expanded six times over about 30 years and now covers 204,296 square feet.

That's enough to provide 4.1 million cubic feet of storage space, with pallets stacked as high as 25 feet.

Outside walls of the freezer warehouses have 11 inches of insulation, and special foil-type flashing is glued to all edges and corners to prevent both air leaks and frost buildup. Loading docks on all the newer warehouses - 16 truck bays in all - allow forklift loading from freezers, and quick turn- arounds for frozen-food freight haulers.

"We kind of built it big enough to get the last kernel of corn in the door," Pete Lafferty says.

Then there's Eugene Freezing's sister company, SnowTemp Cold Storage in Albany, which the Laffertys built in 1974. After several expansions, SnowTemp now offers another 6.9 million cubic feet of storage space.

A small percentage of the space at each facility is set aside for nonfrozen cold storage products, at 40 degrees. The remainder is for frozen food - from crab to cranberries - at temperatures ranging downward to minus-18 degrees.

"It's been a business that has had pretty steady growth," says Pete Lafferty, who serves as the company's president.

His brother is vice president and heads the Albany operation. Pete's 30-year-old son, Jason, joined the company in 2001 and now serves as general manager at the Eugene facility.

Eugene Freezing originally was built primarily as a production facility, storing products for the old Eugene Fruit Growers Association and then AgriPac. But its mission has changed over time.

"Frozen cherries used to be 90 percent of the business, and now we don't do a one," Pete says. "Now it's getting more into ice cream."

"We'll store a couple million pounds of ice cream at any one time," Jason Lafferty says.

Which, relatively speaking, is small potatoes. The company stores 10 million pounds of corn annually, and its largest-volume product is cranberries, at about 20 million pounds per year.

Ocean Spray, for instance, keeps all of its harvested crop of Oregon cranberries - grown near Bandon - at Eugene Freezing.

The food processor draws on the frozen berries throughout the year, as needed.

Other products you might find at Eugene Freezing - in quantities that make Costco look mom-and-pop - include store-brand juices from Cliffstar Corp., Tombstone Pizza, soy-based ice cream alternatives from Eugene's Turtle Mountain Inc., poultry from Creswell's Foster Farms, and tuna and crab from Dave's Gourmet Albacore and Pacific Seafood, respectively.

The company has gradually shifted from serving almost exclusively as a production facility, storing bulk products for food-processing companies, to increasingly being a distribution point for ready-for-market products.

As the focus has changed, so have the corporate clients - and prospects for future business relationships.

Jason Lafferty, for instance, has his sights set on adding clients from the growing list of natural food processors in the area.

"There's some movement to bring processors from California up here," he says. "And Eugene's not a bad place to be."

Jason says that with some authority, having been elsewhere for several years before his return to the family business.

He went to college in Ohio and then spent four years in Vail, Colo., where he coached ski racing and served as an event manager for the resort.

"I was going to school and I wasn't coming back here, but this has been fantastic," he says. "I came back and gave it a shot, and I've really enjoyed it."

Now, Jason's younger brother, Willie, is working at the company as summer help, as is Mike Lafferty's son, Sam.

It's too early to tell if they'll wind up in the family business, but they're getting their first taste.

"I'll probably do the same thing Jason did," says Willie, who is 18. "I'll go somewhere else for a while and do something. Then we'll see."

EUGENE FREEZING & STORAGE

Founded: In 1957 by Paul Lafferty

Address: 310 S. Seneca Road

Owners: Lafferty family

Number of employees: 15

Family employees involved in the business: Pete Lafferty, president: Mike Lafferty, vice president; Jason Lafferty, general manager; Willie and Sam Lafferty, summer help

CAPTION(S):

Eugene Freezing & Storage was founded in 1957 by Paul Lafferty. His sons, Pete Lafferty (left) and Mike Lafferty (right), have taken their turns, and now Pete's son Jason (center, with his brother, Willie, behind him) is gathering up the reins of the family business.