Coast Tropical, an arm of San Diego-based Coast Citrus Distributors, operates North America’s largest banana ripening facility, with fifty pressurized rooms. The company was founded by Roberto R. Alvarez, who was chosen as the poster child in a landmark 1930 school desegregation case in Lemon Grove, CA, predating Brown vs. Board of Education by 23 years. It is now a 70% employee-owned, multi-million dollar wholesale fruit and vegetable distributor with fifteen facilities in the United States and Mexico.