A Reading-based development company expects to start construction next year on a two-warehouse project that will create 400 to 700 jobs in Lackawanna County, the company's owner said Wednesday.
Century Development Associates owner and president Mark Powell offered the details after watching Gov. Josh Shapiro announce the state will contribute $6 million to his plans at a news conference on the site.
Powell estimated the jobs will pay $18 to $50 an hour.
“A lot of tech people, a lot of logistics people. Logistics people are high-end jobs,” Powell said.
Overall, Century Development expects the Century Logistics Center will cost $120 million to $140 million to build, he said. The warehouses will sit just off the Mayfield exit of Route 6, the Casey Highway.
State spending to reclaim land, too
In September 2023, the state Department of Environmental Protections awarded Mayfield $14.97 million to reclaim 87 acres of former coal mining land in Mayfield and Archbald boroughs for the construction.
That will entail moving about 1.2 million cubic yards of rock and earth, Powell said. That’s enough to fill 133 standard outdoor American swimming pools, assuming the pools are 20 yards long, 10 yards wide and 5 feet deep.
“And so, what we're doing to put (up) buildings, or any sort of structures, we have to dig over, excavate past the mines, crush everything and put it back and dynamically compact it so that you can build on top,” Powell said.
Very large warehouses
Reclaiming the land alone will take a year, he said. After that, the company plans to build a 646,380-square foot warehouse in Archbald and a 745,200-square-foot warehouse in Mayfield. They will stand 53 feet tall.
“You know technology and software tends to change things, but warehouses are no longer going out, they’re going up because the technology, the lift systems that they use, and all of that, is being improved,” he said.
The first warehouse should be ready by the spring of 2027, he said.
Who fills the space?
Powell does not have tenants lined up.
“We’re talking to a lot of people,” he said. “Now that we broke ground, that's when everybody comes out, because that they know you're for real.”
The demand for more warehouses remains strong and he’s already looking at acquiring more land, Powell said.
“It’s very high ... “Yes, we have some things in our plans,” he said, declining to offer details.
'The next Lehigh Valley'
Powell said he’s developed the project for 2½ years. He heard years ago about the county being “a great place that economic development is coming,” he said.
“And I’ve got to tell you, this is the next Lehigh Valley,” he said, referring to the boom in warehousing in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area just to the south.
Shapiro said the state’s $6 million contribution will come from its PA Sites program. The program aims to ready land for development. The governor said the money will pay for extending utilities to the warehouses “so that they are ready for major companies who want to take advantage of a state-of-the-art site.”
As he often does, Shapiro boasted about his administration speeding up construction permitting to encourage development.
“Before I took office, we were not only losing the game, we weren't even on the field of play,” he said. “We're now on the field, and we are winning, and we are winning big time and creating jobs and economic opportunity.”
