SHARON, Pa. – Rather than watching as other agencies expend limited resources, Penn-Northwest Development Corp. is increasingly stepping in to provide back-office services to the organizations so they can focus on their core missions.
The initiative represents an expansion of the services that Penn-Northwest provides to the community beyond the loan assistance and other programs it traditionally has provided over the years. Part of Penn-Northwest’s role as Mercer County’s lead economic development agency is to serve as a resource for other economic development organizations, Rod Wilt, executive director, says.
“We’re cooperating without consolidating,” he says.
According to Wilt, people don’t realize that Penn-Northwest is an administrative resource for other economic development agencies around Mercer County. That frees those organizations to focus more on being creative. Since he joined Penn-Northwest in September 2020, the staff has expanded from three to eight, and revenues have more than doubled to $970,000 from the $400,000 the organization recorded during the first year, he says.
“The organization has grown considerably but we’ve grown by taking on more responsibility,” he remarks.
That expanded responsibility includes assisting companies with grant and loan compliance work, managing the Greenville Area Economic Development Corp. and providing back-office services for organizations like Mercer County Industrial Development Authority and Shenango Valley Chamber of Commerce.
“We like doing that kind of work, because we’re staffed up for it,” he says. “A lot of these smaller economic development organizations that are vital and play a vital role, we hate to see them burn up a lot of their resources in back-office personnel type stuff when we can step in.”
The services Penn-Northwest provides to the Shenango Valley Chamber includes doing its accounting and managing its member database.
The opportunity arose when the person the chamber had been using for those services no longer wanted the job, Jim Bombeck, executive director, says. The chamber reached out to Penn-Northwest, which agreed to take over the services – an arrangement that is going well so far.
“It’s been a delight to work with them,” Bombeck says. “Neither one of us view each other as a threat. We help each other.”
Penn-Northwest is managing a range of projects, including its long-term repopulation initiative and various mid- to long-range projects on company additions and expansions.
Among its more immediate projects is transitioning Sharon Regional Medical Center – owned by bankrupt Steward Health Care System – “to hopefully a nonprofit operator that will keep the hospital open and functioning and running as a community hospital,” Wilt says.
Among the larger projects on the agenda is assisting Advanced Power & Energy – which received $500,000 from the Mercer County Innovation Fund – with its move to Greenville-Reynolds Development Corp.’s industrial park. Penn-Northwest also helped write a $50 million U.S. Department of Energy grant request to encourage the company to build a manufacturing plant in the county.
The agency also is working with Lindy Paving, which is building a low-carbon asphalt plant. Though the project won’t provide many direct jobs, it will contribute significantly to indirect jobs because of the volume of contractors that are served by the Farrell plant.
In July, Greenville-Reynolds was awarded $943,000 by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Financing authority to assist with redevelopment of the former Damascus-Bishop Tube Co. site “in hopes of getting someone interested in building there,” he says. The funding consists of a $385,160 grant and a $577,740 low-interest loan.
To help create project-ready sites in Mercer County, Penn-Northwest is seeking $2 million from the PA Sites program for the 206-acre site off exit 15 of Interstate 80.
The site is under option to InSite Real Estate Group LLC, a Kansas firm that specializes in finding locations for large transportation, warehousing, distribution and manufacturing companies along the I-80 corridor, Wilt says. InSite is working on a couple requests for proposals and already has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on due diligence for the property.
In addition, Penn-Northwest continues to monitor Austria-based Voestalpine’s potential $80 million, 150,000-square-foot expansion project at the former Sharon Roll Form plant in Farrell. The company also is considering Indiana for the project.
“We’re waiting to hear whether that expansion is going through,” Wilt says.
Penn-Northwest is managing an active loan portfolio of $976,000 and recently approved two loans totaling $360,000 for a pair of projects.
One loan, for $250,000, is to JCL Development, part of a package of up to $850,000 for the purchase of the former Sharon Tube plant for an undisclosed project. Shenango Valley Enterprise Zone is providing a $250,000 loan and Sharon Industrial Development Authority is looking at a loan between $250,000 and $350,000.
Penn-Northwest previously made a loan to JCL, owned by Sharon entrepreneur Jim Landino, to acquire 420 Vine Ave. JCL operated it as a warehouse and distribution center, then sold the building to Joy Cone and repaid the loan.
“And we’re relending those proceeds back to Jim,” Wilt says.
In addition, a $110,000 loan is being made to Fenrick Enterprises of Grove City, Pa., which does business as Tina’s Taxi & Delivery, a reservation ride service. The company is purchasing and renovating a garage building to serve as a dispatch center and central hub.
“We’re a one-stop shop for transportation. We do a bit of everything,” owner Tina Fenrick says.
Her primary business is with corporate and medical clients as well as colleges and universities.
Fenrick says she saw a need for such a service when she was sales manager at the Hampton Inn in Grove City. People used ride share services to come from Pittsburgh “and thought that they could Uber back, and there just was really no transportation around here,” she says.
Pictured at top: Under Rod Wilt’s direction, the agency has doubled its annual revenue.