Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday completed a five-day swing across Western Pennsylvania, handing out more than $50 million in state funding for more than three dozen economic development projects, ranging from manufacturing and technology to education and the arts.

Gov. Ed Rendell

"We have to create not just jobs," he said during an event at Carnegie Mellon University, "but jobs that pay well, jobs that take into account the need for a varied economy."

One of the biggest winners was Dick's Sporting Goods, which received a $10.85 million financial package to use for a significant expansion of the company's 200,000-square-foot corporate headquarters in Findlay.

The expansion will cost about $64 million and will add 700 jobs over the next five years, the governor's office said. More than 1,200 employees already work at the headquarters. The state's financial package includes $2.1 million in tax credits.

The governor started out yesterday at Carnegie Mellon, where he announced that Apple Computer will soon be a tenant at the university's new Collaborative Innovation Center. The Apple facility will create about 200 jobs and will share the center's top floor with Intel Corp., which moved its Pittsburgh research laboratory there in April.

"It's the only facility that we know of in the world where Apple and Intel are working side by side," said Mark Kamlet, the university's provost. "It's certainly a nice partnership."

The innovation center, a $27-million facility that opened this year, enables technology companies to work closely with the university's faculty and students. It is also part of the governor's Keystone Innovation Zone program, an initiative geared toward commercializing university technology and creating new companies.

Before Rendell spoke, Grace, a Carnegie Mellon robot with a computer monitor for a head, welcomed him to Pittsburgh in a staccato voice.

"After the Philadelphia Eagles game, it seems we have a lot in common," the robot said to laughter.

The governor also made stops at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Neville Island and North Huntingdon, Westmoreland County, where he presented a $1 million grant for training employees at the Sony Technology Center complex.

Education Management, the parent of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, was given $665,000 for the expansion of the company's online learning division, a $1.8 million project that will create 170 new jobs.

Frontier Steel Co., which manufactures specialty steel products, received a $280,000 package for its new 33-acre site on Neville Island. RedPath Integrated Pathology, a North Side cancer diagnostic firm that plans to add 67 jobs to its nine-person staff, received $301,000.

Other grant recipients include the African-American Cultural Center, a complex planned for Downtown Pittsburgh, and the Horticultural Society of Western Pennsylvania, which will develop a 452-acre botanical garden on a former coal mining site in Settlers Cabin Park. Both organizations received $175,000.