A flourishing warehousing and distribution industry promises thousands of new jobs and millions of tax dollars for Lackawanna County, but heavy tractor-trailer traffic poses an increased risk for chronic disease, more traffic congestion and greater wear and tear on roads.
The warehousing and transportation industries are rapidly expanding in Northeast Pennsylvania as developers shift their attention here because of an available workforce, inexpensive land and access to major interstates.
Luzerne County recently saw an explosion in warehousing and distribution, with sprawling business parks such as Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services’
1,800-acre CenterPoint Commerce & Trade Park — a fast-growing hub for logistics in Pittston and Jenkins townships that boasts firms like Amazon, FedEx SmartPost, Home Depot and Lowes. Now, Lackawanna County is seeing its own surge.
In the past 18 months, developers from across the country discussed plans to develop almost 4 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space in the Midvalley.
The four warehouses proposed are:
NorthPoint Development of Riverside, Missouri: 1 million square feet in the Valley View Business Park in Archbald. NorthPoint purchased 70.22 acres in the business park in April.
Trammell Crow Company’s TCNE Valley View of Dallas, Texas: 1 million square feet in the Valley View Business Park in Jessup. TCNE broke ground for its distribution center in May.
Logistics Property Co. of Chicago, Illinois: 850,000 square feet on Route 247 near Alberigi Drive in Jessup.
Langen Development Economics of Easton: Approximately 1 million square feet on East Lackawanna Avenue in Olyphant.
Besides the four proposed warehouses, Olyphant borough council voted in May to make nearly 1,000 acres of land east of the Casey Highway eligible for 10-year tax abatements to draw warehousing to the undeveloped land.
Developers are also building more than 5 million square feet of warehouse space in Luzerne County for firms like Chewy, Adidas, Patagonia, True Value and Spreetail, said Wico Van Genderen, the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce president and CEO.
While some welcome the job opportunities and tax revenue that warehousing and distribution will bring, others warn of the consequences of drawing so much tractor-trailer traffic to the region.
Health concerns
A growing warehousing and distribution industry means more tractor-trailers picking up and dropping off freight.
The effect of increased tractor trailer traffic is clear, said Michael McCawley, Ph.D., a West Virginia University associate professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences.
“You’ll see more chronic disease,” he said.
Research shows that people living close to interstates tend to have much higher rates of chronic illnesses, including cancer, birth defects, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, he said.
McCawley’s testimony in front of Congress in April included information about an entirely unregulated, harmful by-product of diesel engines: ultrafine particles.
“When you increase the amount of truck traffic, you increase the ultrafine particle concentration,” McCawley said. “When you increase the ultrafine particle concentration, you increase chronic disease.”
The particles are so tiny that they can more easily enter cells in the human body.
“Once inside the cell, they can cause havoc,” he said.
In its annual State of the Air report published in April, the American Lung Association gave Lackawanna County high marks for “excellent results for two measures of fine particle pollution.” The report examined data from 2015 to 2017.
Those measurements do not include the exponentially smaller ultrafine particles, McCawley said, which are so small they go essentially undetected by Environmental Protection Agency monitoring. As a result, the EPA does not monitor or control emissions of ultrafine particles, he said.
There is a solution for decreasing the amount of ultrafine particles, though.
Although diesel engines output the microscopic pollutants, there are engine designs available that emit far fewer ultrafine particles, McCawley said. There needs to be regulations in place to force companies to use these engines, he said. Ultrafine particles aren’t in the Clean Air Act, so the EPA doesn’t even have the authority to regulate them, he said.
At Kane is Able, Stark welcomed anything that can be done to reduce emissions, adding that Kane participates in the EPA’s SmartWay program, which aims to make transporting freight more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
“It’s something we care very deeply about,” he said. “Anything that you can do better and safer and with less emissions is always a good thing.”
More congestion
More truck traffic also means more congestion and more interactions between pedestrians, passenger vehicles and trucks, said Lackawanna County Transportation Planning Manager Steve Pitoniak.
Many of the region’s road systems, built in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, were not designed to handle so many heavy truck loads, he said.
Even Interstate 81, designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was not envisioned to handle this truck and freight traffic — even though warehousing and distribution businesses are positive for the region, said Alan Baranski, Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance vice president for the transportation planning services division and part of the Focus 81 Committee.
“It’s putting a lot of pressure on the interstate,” he said.
Adding a third lane to I-81 in the urbanized areas of Lackawanna and Luzerne counties is a long-term goal to reduce congestion, but the project could be 10 years away and will cost an estimated $600 million to $1 billion, Baranski said.
“Building our way out of this is really not a viable solution,” he said.
Working with the private businesses is one way to reduce congestion, Baranski said. That means monitoring real-time traffic data, staggering shifts at warehouses and sending drivers out at off-peak hours — not 5 p.m. weekdays. Focus 81 also advocates for using the Pennsylvania Turnpike as an alternative to I-81.
More truck traffic accelerates wear and tear on roadways — both interstates and the local roads trucks use to access business parks.
Worrying about wear and tear, traffic and pollution are valid concerns, said Teri Ooms, executive director at the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development at Wilkes University. However, whether there is warehousing in the region, I-80 and I-81 will still be major corridors for tractor-trailers, she said.
“Even without the distribution centers, we’re still going to have truck traffic,” she said. “We’d still be dealing with the negative effects without the positives.”
In Luzerne County, several projects helped protect local roads and ease tractor-trailer traffic for CenterPoint’s 9.9 million square feet of facilities — nearly half of which is used for warehousing and distribution, said Jim Cummings, vice president of marketing for Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services.
Those projects included rebuilding Exit 178 on I-81, extending Navy Way Road to give the park a secondary entrance and exit, installing roundabouts and creating a dedicated deceleration lane at Exit 175 on northbound I-81.
Truck parking also needs to be addressed. Drivers are limited to 10 hours of driving per shift, then they need a safe place to park and rest. Baranski floated the idea of the government offering financial incentives for the construction of parking spaces in strategic areas along I-81.
With 3 million square feet of warehouse space on track to move into Jessup and Archbald, the Casey Highway’s exits into Jessup will see more tractor trailers, which concerns some residents. Valley View Business Park’s entrance is in Jessup.
Resident and Citizens for a Healthy Jessup member Jeff Smith worries whether nearby infrastructure can handle increased tractor-trailer traffic.
“What comes first?” he asked. “All of these warehouses, and then you realize there’s a major problem, or do you develop the infrastructure before you break ground?”
Cummings, who previously worked at the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce for 18 years where he served as vice president, does not foresee traffic issues in Jessup.
He estimated the new warehousing in the park would add about 2,000 jobs.
“The park road network has been designed with many more jobs than that in mind, so I don’t anticipate any major traffic issues in the near term,” he said.
Pitoniak agreed, saying he doesn’t see congestion on the Casey as a pressing issue. There are ways to ease congestion, such as changing the timing of traffic signals, adding lanes and lengthening ramps.
“Right now, I don’t see that as being a necessity,” he said.
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The region’s expanding warehousing and distribution industry also brings good news for the region: jobs and tax revenue.
A 1-million-square-foot warehouse can employ anywhere from a few hundred to more than a thousand workers, said Andrew Skrip, vice president of the Scranton Lackawanna Industrial Building Co., an affiliate of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce.
Many of the jobs do not require four-year degrees, and the growing demand for workers locally translates to higher wages, said Teri Ooms, executive director at the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development at Wilkes University.
“Demand is high, supply is short,” she said.
Hourly wages for warehouse workers increased over the years from $8 to a minimum of $11, with firms paying up to $15 an hour, Skrip said.
Distribution centers also offer strong benefit packages, including health, dental, vision and life insurance, along with 401(k)s, Ooms said.
Warehouse jobs give workers room for career growth, allowing them to start at the bottom and work their way up to supervisor and managerial positions that could pay close to six figures, said Brianna Florovito, SLIBCO workforce and entrepreneurial development specialist.
In Lackawanna County, Kane is Able employs between 500 and 600 workers in its more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space, said spokesman Alex Stark. For coachable workers with skills that can be developed, opportunities abound, he said.
“There’s unbelievable opportunity that exists in supply chain logistics,” he said.
Tax revenue
Cash-strapped municipalities and school districts also will benefit from the growing amount of industrial development — although tax abatement programs designed to entice developers may delay the flow of cash for several years.
About a decade ago, Covington Twp. saw a surge of development that resulted in nearly 3.3 million square feet of warehouses. Today, major tenants in the Covington Twp. Industrial Park include Mazda, Amazon Logistics, Innovel and AmeriCold.
At just over 1 million square feet, Innovel’s building at 151 First Ave. in the township is assessed at $4.24 million, Lackawanna County tax assessor records show. Under the township’s 10.25 millage rate, that amounts to $43,460 annually in property taxes. For the North Pocono School District, which taxes property at 135.49 mills, that translates to $574,477.60 every year from Innovel.
Assessed at $5.255 million, Amazon’s 1.279 million-square-foot warehouse brings in $711,999.95 for North Pocono and $53,863.75 for the township each year.
A mill is a $1 tax for every $1,000 of assessed value.
The township hasn’t raised taxes since 1999 — something township Chairman David Petrosky attributes to “good planning with the funds that we’re receiving.”
With the tax revenue, the township built a new pavilion and hosts fishing derbies and other community events, he said.
The tax revenue helped the annual budget of the North Pocono School District, which includes Covington Twp., said Superintendent Bryan McGraw.
However, to entice developers to the region, municipal, school district and county officials often approve tax abatement programs that delay or reduce taxes for years. Keystone Opportunity Zones offer tax breaks to promote development in select locations that otherwise may go undeveloped; Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance offers tax breaks on improvements made on a property for a set period of time.
Eventually, though, Valley View School District will see some of the same things North Pocono saw, McGraw said.
“In the long run, it’s going to benefit the district a great deal,” he said.
Both McGraw and Valley View’s business manager, Corey Castellani, noted the necessity of tax incentives to attract developers.
“Don’t get me wrong, we’d love to have the full-phase value of the tax from day one, but in order to draw these companies to this area, we had to provide some kind of tax incentive,” Castellani said.
Contact the writer:
flesnefsky@timesshamrock.com;
570-348-9100 x5181;
@flesnefskyTT on Twitter