Kennywood Entertainment Co. is buying a nearby shopping center and a 23-acre brownfield site for future expansion that is contingent on completion of the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

The property acquisitions near the West Mifflin park will be used for "blue sky expansion plans" that company officials are expected to announce at a news conference today. Kennywood wouldn't release details of the plans or identify the brownfield site yesterday.

"We are always looking to expand, but it is difficult being landlocked and also difficult because of the road system," Mary Lou Rosemeyer, director of public relations, said yesterday.

For years, the amusement park has been buying up residential and commercial properties in its neighborhood, which locals call "Kennyville."

One of its newest purchases is a shopping center on Hoffman Boulevard in West Mifflin that includes a vacant store that formerly was a Kmart, as well as storefronts leased to Pat Catan's Craft Center and several other businesses.

The Kmart building is large, vacant and fronts on an ample parking lot. It may be used merely as a storage area, at least in the short term.

Rosemeyer said Kennywood currently leases space at a nearby vacant Ames store in another shopping center known as Kennywood Plaza to store materials used for the park's Phantom Fright nights, staged each year before Halloween.

She made it clear that Kennywood does have big ideas for major expansion. A hotel would not be out of the question.

"There is truth to the fact that there are many ideas," Rosemeyer said yesterday. "A lot are contingent on the completion of the Mon-Fayette Expressway."

When completed, the expressway will be a 70-mile, limited-access highway from Pittsburgh to Interstate 68 in West Virginia. Thirty-five miles already are completed and open, starting at Route 51 in Jefferson Hills in southern Allegheny County and running through Fayette and Washington counties.

Rosemeyer said Kennywood would enjoy economic benefits from completion of the 24-mile northern portion from Jefferson Hills to East Pittsburgh, with one branch going to Monroeville and the other connecting to the Parkway East at Bates Street in Oakland.

She said one of the proposed exits would be near the park, which is on Route 837 in West Mifflin.

Yesterday, Tom Fox of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission said the commission is in the design phase of the toll road and doesn't plan to start acquiring properties for the right of way until late 2006.

"We are still working to get the finances in place," he said.

Dennis Davin, Allegheny County's director of economic development, said Kennywood officials have not been in touch with the county for help acquiring the brownfield site.

The former site of U.S. Steel's Duquesne Works, adjacent to Kennywood on the south side of the park, is owned by the Regional Industrial Development Corp. Davin, who meets regularly with RIDC, said he wasn't aware of any plans to sell part of the site.

Kennywood, founded in 1898 as a trolley park, has steadily grown and changed through the last century and into the new one.

Kennywood Entertainment Co. also owns Sandcastle, a water park in West Homestead, Idlewild park in Ligonier Township, and Lake Compounce in Bristol, Conn.

The company also has acquired some private catering businesses, Rosemeyer said.