Regional Insights: Give me lots of land for manufacturing jobs
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A worker walks between two ovens lined with copper tubing where the glass will be made for parabolic solar mirrors at Flabeg Solar US in the Clinton Commerce Park in Findlay Township. -
The quality control station on the syringe assembly line at Medrad's plant in Clinton.
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Imagine for a moment that the Pittsburgh region gets some good news early this year -- several manufacturing firms are seriously considering building new assembly plants in southwestern Pennsylvania, each of which would employ hundreds of workers with high wages and good benefits. But a few months later it turns out that the celebration was premature -- the companies can't find an industrial site here that will accommodate their plants, and they are forced to take their jobs elsewhere.
Think it couldn't happen? Think again.
A decade ago, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance reported that southwestern Pennsylvania had lost more than 4,000 jobs and more than $800 million in investment by a dozen manufacturing firms and other business prospects in a two-year period due to a lack of suitable industrial sites.
Why would industrial sites be in such short supply?
The reason is our topography. The same rolling hills and rivers that make Pittsburgh one of the most scenic regions in the country also make it one of the most difficult and expensive in which to develop land, particularly the kind of large flat sites that manufacturing firms and distribution facilities need. Nearly 70 percent of the land in southwestern Pennsylvania has a slope greater than 8 percent, whereas in Columbus, Ohio, less than 200 miles to the west, less than 20 percent of the land is that steep. Turning land with steep slopes into industrial sites can cost twice as much or more than using land that is flat to begin with.
Because of that, it's not surprising that virtually all of the limited supply of flat land we have has already been used for something. Even when a site becomes available for reuse, existing facilities have to be demolished, any environmental contamination has to be cleaned up, and the infrastructure has to be modernized, again making it far more expensive than a flat, unused piece of property in another region. And many of the flat sites we have are along the rivers, which we increasingly want to use for recreational amenities.
First Published February 6, 2011 12:00 am
