Benefits unclear 20 years after Pennsylvania governor, legislators gave away land with promise of jobs, revenue

Yahoo

11-04-2025

This story was produced by the State College regional bureau of Spotlight PA, an independent, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to investigative and public-service journalism for Pennsylvania. Sign up for Talk of the Town, a weekly newsletter of local stories that dig deep, events, and more from north-central PA, at spotlightpa.org/newsletters/talkofthetown.
BELLEFONTE — In 2006, Pennsylvania sold 135 acres it owned to a nonprofit development corporation for $1.
The Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County envisioned creating a commerce park that would bring businesses, jobs, and taxes to the community, Greg Scott, president and CEO of the development agency since 2021, told Spotlight PA.
Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who signed off on legislation approving the deal, said the move could bring up to 4,000 jobs to the area, the Centre Daily Times reported.
The vast area surrounding SCI Rockview was underutilized but shovel-ready for industrial development, Rendell pitched in 2005, according to the CDT. Creation of high-tech jobs in the future business park would keep 'bright, young engineers and scientists and business graduates' from Penn State in the community, Rendell said.
But over the past two decades, the commerce park has seen sluggish growth — even as the development agency bought an additional 82.5 private acres to expand the footprint and make the design more cohesive. Millions of dollars have changed hands as parcels were sold, benefitting developers and business owners — before the community could reap the growth originally promised.
Now, Amazon is moving in, a signal to Scott and former state Sen. Jake Corman (R., Centre) that the park's economic plan is coming to fruition.
Still, it's hard to say whether the state's choice to essentially give away the land will benefit taxpayers more than selling it to the highest bidder would have. A spokesperson for Pennsylvania's Department of General Services told Spotlight PA in an email that the commonwealth generally doesn't track the eventual fate of such land.
'The process does create the opportunity for the decision-making to be more deliberative and consistent with the good of the community … rather than just going to the highest bidder,' Penn State Professor of Agricultural Economics Tim Kelsey told Spotlight PA in an email. 'I can't say how well this promise is actually achieved, however.'
Surplus land that is owned by the state but serves no purpose can be transferred to an outside entity, the Department of General Services spokesperson said, through a process called conveyance.
The commonwealth can transfer land to a local redevelopment authority by agreement. It can also sell property by a competitive bidding process or to a direct buyer through legislative action.
In the case of Benner Commerce Park, Rendell's administration, as well as the legislature, approved the land conveyance essentially for free and gave the Centre County Industrial Development Corporation — the chamber's business arm — a decree to place the property into productive use within five years.
The business park is situated between State College and Bellefonte. Its location, near the intersection of Interstate 99 and state Route 150, is an advantage that 'can't be understated' for commercial growth, Centre County senior planner Chris Schnure told Spotlight PA. He added that readily available public utilities also strengthened the appeal for potential development there.
Corman told Spotlight PA that the state's decision to convey the land to the local economic development agency benefitted the district he represented.
Those local agencies 'should decide the best use of that land,' said Corman, who became a founding partner at the lobbying firm One+ Strategies after he left office. 'My job was to free up the land for local use.'
Scott told Spotlight PA that the chamber wanted to increase the footprint of the business park and make the design more cohesive, so it purchased additional land in 2009.
Those 82.5 acres — which bordered the east side of the originally state-owned land — were sold to the chamber by the Ault Family Limited Partnership. The land came with a price tag of $1.8 million, county records showed. That was five times its fair market value then, according to the deed.
But owning those more than 200 acres of land and attempting to develop them backfired for the chamber because of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, Scott said.
Even though several businesses moved into the park and bought parcels in its infancy, the Great Recession stalled plans to bring in more occupants. A majority of the lots sat empty. Interests to build a YMCA campus or a brewery there did not materialize, county planners told Spotlight PA.
The chamber borrowed money and leveraged itself financially in the hope of profiting from the business park, Scott said. But facing debt issues, it ended up selling five parcels of the park — or about 90 acres — in 2014 to a private company, Bellefonte-State College I-99 LLC, county records showed. The company paid $2.7 million for the purchase.
The chamber told the CDT it hoped the group of experienced local developers — Bob Poole, Heidi Nicholas, and Paul Silvis — who owned the company would have a better chance at developing the park.
State Rep. Scott Conklin (D., Centre) at the time questioned whether the sale was properly marketed before it was finalized, according to the CDT. Conklin and another state lawmaker asked for the auditor general's office to review the transaction, but the evaluation never materialized due to layoffs at the agency.
The developers separately bought a parcel — where the new Amazon warehouse will be built — in 2019, according to Spotlight PA's review of county records.
YMCA of Centre County paid $300,000 for the land, where a new campus was planned, but never occupied it. The majority of this parcel was previously owned by the Ault family and not a part of the land gifted by the state. The Bellefonte-State College I-99 LLC bought their 46 acres for $500,000.
The developers became the owners of more than 136 of about 217 acres that make up Benner Commerce Park.
Poole, Nicholas, and Silvis — the owners of Bellefonte-State College I-99 LLC — did not return Spotlight PA's requests for comment.
Despite the local developers' experience and ownership and a push to enroll the park in the Keystone Opportunity Zones program, which eliminates some state and local taxes to entice investment, Benner Commerce Park did not see much progress — until a warehouse proposal came in 2022.
Plans for the warehouse originally raised eyebrows because no one knew the company behind them. Amazon employed a firm to shield its identity via a nondisclosure agreement when submitting development plans to the county. That mystery remained for nearly three years.
'We don't know who this is,' Centre County Commissioner Steve Dershem said during an April 2022 public meeting, when the county was first presented with a proposal for a million-square-foot warehouse. Dershem said the secrecy raised concern. 'At the level that this is, I think we deserve some answers as a community.'
Property development firm SunCap submitted — and withdrew — two nearly identical proposals for a million-square-foot warehouse on Amazon's behalf in 2022. In 2024, a new plan for a significantly smaller facility was presented and received conditional approval.
SunCap did not respond to a request for comment for this story. The county learned that Amazon was the end user only when the deed was filed in December 2024, Schnure added.
Amazon purchased 103 acres in the commerce park from Bellefonte-State College I-99 LLC for $6.3 million, according to county records.
Scott, of the chamber, said it's not yet clear how many jobs the Amazon warehouse would create but suggested between 100 and 200 positions.
Corman said Amazon's arrival will generate new tax income for Benner Township. He credited the chamber for fulfilling a vision for economic development that started nearly two decades ago.
'It took a lot longer than any of us anticipated,' he said. 'But now it's actually getting some growth, and that's a positive thing.'
County planners told Spotlight PA that the Amazon warehouse still requires a few approvals, including for traffic, zoning, stormwater, and easements, before construction can begin.
Despite the few parcels left to be developed, Scott said Amazon moving in signals 'the completion of the buildout of the vision of Benner Commerce Park.'
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