Shapiro touts PA SITES grant for Bedford
BEDFORD – Gov. Josh Shapiro stood in a windswept field of dirt, brush and grass Tuesday and envisioned how the location in Bedford Township is expected to someday soon be home to a new shovel-ready industrial park.
He came to the spot, located along Country Ridge Road, to announce the first round of funding for the new Pennsylvania Strategic Investments to Enhance Sites program.
The state is allocating $64 million in grants for 11 combined projects, including $2.8 million for Bedford County Development Association to transform 151 acres of unused land into Bedford County Business Park III. The plan is to grade parcels, extend water and sewage lines, and build roads to make the property ready for use by businesses.
There will be nine lots ranging from one acre to 20.9 acres.
'Here in Bedford County we are literally turning dirt into jobs,' said Shapiro, a Democrat. 'This is real freedom.
'This is real opportunity. And it is really happening in Bedford County thanks to the great leaders up here and the commitment from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.'
Shapiro continued: 'We see this dirt, and we see opportunity. A business might see this dirt and kinda worry that there's too much risk for them. We want to de-risk that and give them a chance to succeed.'
BCDA President and CEO Bette Slayton said opportunities have been missed because the county's other industrial parks are almost entirely sold out.
'Now, now, thanks to this investment, we're back in the game,' Slayton said.
No businesses have been lined up yet, but 'I'm sure that once we're able to announce that it's coming, we will have a lot of interest,' according to Slayton. A timeline for the project is not set, but the next steps will be to do engineering work and bid out the construction contracts. Once completed, the park is expected to be home to multiple businesses that will employ people from Bedford and neighboring counties, while increasing the tax base.
Slayton described getting the grant to develop the project as 'a game-changer for Bedford County.'
'It gives us the ability to develop and to proactively market new shovel-ready sites and that's something that's absolutely critical in recruiting and attracting new employers,' Slayton said. 'You need to have the sites.'
Bedford County Commissioner Chairman Mike Stiles, a Republican, said moving the PA SITES-funded initiative forward is a 'shot in the arm for BCDA and Bedford County.'
Projects in Berks, Bucks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Fayette, Franklin, Luzerne, Philadelphia, Washington and Westmoreland counties are also being funded in the first round from among 66 applications that were submitted.
'Importantly – and this is different from how it's been done in the past – we focus our investment in every corner of this commonwealth – rural, urban and suburban,' Shapiro said. 'I see promise in fields like this, just as I see promise in our high rises in downtown Philadelphia and in our suburban office parks that dot our communities across Pennsylvania.
'We've got to stop picking and choosing between one or the other and start investing in all of them. And that's exactly what we're doing with our plan.'
Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary Rick Siger spoke about the importance of such sites by saying 'literally strategy one in our economic development strategy is that we've got to have the product to compete.'
'We've got to have pad-ready industrial sites,' Siger said.
'Without that inventory across Pennsylvania, businesses just don't have options to locate here, and they'll go somewhere else. And that's just not an acceptable outcome for me and it's not an acceptable outcome for the governor, and it's not acceptable for our people. We've got to be able to compete for expansions of existing businesses and new businesses coming to Pennsylvania.'
DCED plans to accept applications and award grants on a rolling basis.
PA SITES was funded with $400 million in the 2024-25 state budget.
Dave Sutor is a reporter for The Tribune-Democrat. He can be reached at 814-532-5056. Follow him on Twitter @Dave_Sutor.
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