FORD CITY, Pa.-- At its peak in the 1950s, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. employed some 4,000 people in this small, factory town. By 1993, when the plant closed for good, the jobs were all gone.

Now, development officials are trying to bring those jobs back -- 140 at a time.

The newest addition was announced yesterday amid ribbon cuttings and speeches inside PPG's old Shop 2 building near the Allegheny River. The former machine shop where PPG's glass-making equipment was made went from having dirt floors just 5 months ago to a new, clean, 9,200 square-foot state-of-the art manufacturing facility for silicon carbide wafers, which are used in the electronics industry.

Caracal Inc., a start-up company that will make the wafers, now employs just a handful of people but plans to employ 140 within three years, though. More companies, bringing in even more jobs, are expected to spring up around those.

The 50-acre development on former PPG land is called the Ford City Heritage and Technology Park.

"We're celebrating our past while developing the future," said Ray Boarts, one of the original members of the Greater Ford City Community Development Corp. which helped get the park, and Caracal's project, off the ground.

The 60,000-square-foot building that houses Caracal is now ready for further development and will be built to suit any interested clients. Ultimately, the entire 50-acre Heritage and Technology Park will be large enough for up to 12 businesses -- a long way to go from the two that are currently there.

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"It's a long process trying to revive a former brownfield site," Boarts said.

It cost about $2 million from PPG and other partners, to prepare the 50 acres. Thus far, the development corporation has invested about $6 million in grant money in the property.

"We didn't save any money in renovating the old building, but at least we preserved the heritage," said Ron Olsen, of Olsen/Hill Design, in Butler, which led the re-design of the Shop 2 building.

Boarts' goal is to create 1,000 new jobs in the business park.

Throughout the former PPG site, which stretches a mile along the river, there are about a half-dozen smaller companies, including a cabinet maker and a mattress company. Those businesses employ about 300 people.

Caracal will hire skilled manufacturers, as well as scientists and engineers.

"These are not minimum-wage jobs," Boarts said.

Starting salaries for production positions at Caracal will range from $35,000 to $50,000, said Rajiv Enand, the president and chief executive officer of the company. Scientists and engineers who work there will earn even more.

Gov. Ed Rendell congratulated Caracal for its vision and interest in the area, as well as local officials who helped the company get both state and federal support. Rendell presented Caracal with almost $1 million in state funds yesterday, including $700,000 in low-interest loans, and $228,000 in grant money for training new employees. The governor also gave another $1 million to the local development corporation to defray some of its costs in the project.

"If we are going to survive and thrive, we have to diversify our economy and diversify our manufacturing," Rendell said. "This is the manufacturing of the future."

Enand hopes the company is in full-scale production within one to two years.

There are many companies that make silicon carbide wafers -- it's a multibillion-dollar industry -- but the new technology developed at Caracal is considered revolutionary and will likely reduce the cost of making these wafers by 75 percent, Enand said.

Within 105 days, Caracal's space was renovated into a clean, high-tech environment housing a silicon-carbide reactor -- a glass-enclosed structure that resembles a large telephone booth.

Enand described the process inside the reactor in a simplified version. A crucible of graphite will be put in the chamber of the reactor and heated to about 5,000 degrees. Various gases will then be introduced to make silicon and carbon bond together. It will form into the size and shape of a hockey puck, and then be sliced into wafers 1 millimeter in thickness.

Those are then used in various electronics applications, from computers, to electric cars and trains, to naval ships.

Currently, most electronics use silicon semi-conductor wafers, which are about 90 percent efficient, Enand said. The new, silicon carbide wafers will be 99 percent efficient, and reduce the size and weight of a current power circuit by 90 percent, he said.

"This is probably the most advanced silicon carbide manufacturing facility in the world," Boarts said.

Right now, Caracal has one reactor in the building. Ultimately, Enand said, there will be eight.

Because of the advanced processes being used by Caracal, other high-tech companies have expressed interest in the business park, Boarts said. Locating in Western Pennsylvania also gives Caracal, and other similar companies, access to local universities and their technology research.

When John B. Ford founded the borough and his new plate glass company in the late 1800s, he recruited workers from Eastern Europe, who were known for their glass-making skills, Boarts said.

Certainly, the technologies have changed, but the people who came to Ford City to make glass years and years ago, also had to work with silicon, like they'll be doing at Caracal. The projection of 140 employees isn't nearly as large as what PPG once had, but Enand is confident it will grow even further.

"From there, the sky's the limit," he said.