HERMITAGE, Pa. – Progress on a 938,000-square-foot warehousing and distribution center and the long-awaited repurposing of the former Shenango Valley Mall property are among the major economic development projects taking place in Mercer County, Pa., local officials report.
An announcement that the proposed distribution center, now being referred to as Project Cake, would move forward could come in the next 60 days, Rod Wilt, executive director of Penn-Northwest Development Corp., says. If the project moves forward, the center is expected to create between 600 and 1,100 jobs.
The project already is spurring interest in property near the site, he reports. Developers have purchased nearby land for speculative purposes.
SunCap Property Group in Pittsburgh is the developer associated with the project, which is to be located on county-owned land at Exit 15 of Interstate 80, near Mercer Borough, Wilt says. The building is in the final design phase and past the midway point on permitting, with the biggest issue now being gaining approval from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for a waterline extension.
“Where we are is making sure that the developer can provide the end user every assurance that they can be in the building by the summer of 2027, which means they need to be in the ground – or at least very close to in the ground – by mid-November of this year,” he says. “I would hope that by this time in September, we would have a formal announcement that the project is a go.”
In Hermitage, work is advancing on the Hickory Fields development at the former Shenango Valley Mall site.
Although Minneapolis-based national retailer Target – long believed to be the big-box retailer that has committed to the property – has yet to officially confirm its presence itself, a commercial construction permit application submitted by Engelsma Construction, also headquartered in Minneapolis, identifies Target as the business going into the $16 million building it is constructing.
In a June 23 email responding to a request for comment, a Target spokesperson said the retailer continuously explores possible new store locations. “I can tell you we are pursuing the opportunity to reach guests in the Hermitage area, but at this time, we’re not at a point where we can share any new store plans,” the spokesperson says.
Other Sites
In addition to Target, land development plans have been submitted and approved for Chick-fil-A, Longhorn Steakhouse and Chili’s, Mark Longietti, business and community development director for the city of Hermitage, reports.
“We still expect vertical construction to begin sometime later this year with store openings anticipated some time in 2026,” he says. A Phase 2 is planned for Hickory Fields development, but Flicore LLC, the developer, has not announced which other brands will be coming to the site.
“To have a modern lifestyle center like that is going to be a shot in the arm for the entire county,” Wilt predicts. The continuing buildout of the mall will be one of the economic drivers through 2026 and 2027 and “the catalyst for future development.”
In addition, Joy Baking Group has completed construction of a 200,000-square-foot cookie plant dedicated to manufacturing cookies and wafers for the ice cream industry.
“Joy is in the process of equipping the building and expects to be operational later this year,” Longietti says. With the expansion, the company will employ nearly 1,000 workers locally.
Joy continues to gain market share from competitors and is “well positioned to grow through acquisition,” Wilt says. “They have facilities across the country, but Hermitage is still the home base, and that’s where a lot of the action is.”
Also in Hermitage, Wheatland Tube recently completed a fully automated warehouse and racking system at its Hermitage facility, Longietti reports. The 95,000-square-foot building represents a $50 million investment and is similar to the automated warehouse constructed at its Warren, Ohio, facility in 2022.
“It will use automation to improve safety and increase productivity,” Longietti says.
Sharon Developments
Angie Urban, Sharon Community Development Corp.’s executive director, is working to complement the private investment taking place in the city. That includes JCL Development, which she describes as a “unicorn for Sharon,” that has $14 million in investment in the city underway. Other private entities pumping money into the city include the Winner family and businessman Michael Lisac.
“The efforts of the CDC are meant to complement the private investments
and to create this partnership where private investors cannot go after some of the grant funding and state funding that a nonprofit and a municipality could,” she says. “Sharon is in this great spot where you kind of have all of these wheels working together. You’ve got private investment, public investment, nonprofits, all kind of rowing in the same direction. “
Elsewhere in Mercer County, Imperial Systems took over the former Valley Can building in Hadley, where the company is doubling the square footage to run an additional line for its filtration business. “That building is going to focus on duct work,” both for its own equipment and for competitors who operate in the industrial filtration space, Wilt says.
Other encouraging developments in the county include continued investment in facilities at Thiel College in Greenville, where officials are raising money with a goal of starting work on a new multi-use wellness center in 2027, and “tens of millions of dollars” in new construction and renovation at Grove City College in Grove City.
“It’s hard to find a positive story about higher education right now,” he acknowledges.
Penn State Campus
That is acutely true in Sharon, where the Penn State University Shenango Campus was among seven campuses PSU’s board of trustees voted to close in May. The campus is slated to close after the spring 2027 semester.
Penn State Shenango has been a staple of the community for a long time, but the dynamics of higher education are changing, Urban says. “There are many leaders within the community who are starting to look at what’s next for the campus,” she says.
Though serious discussion about the campus property has yet to occur, options Wilt reports he has heard include utilizing it as a “western outpost” of the Penn State-affiliated Pennsylvania College of Technology, where a lot of advanced industrial training is provided.
“You get advanced degrees in everything from heavy equipment operations to mechanical and things like that,” Wilt says. “Given the agrarian nature of our region, many Penn State alums from out here that have reached out to me think that that’s a worthwhile discussion to have with University Park about repurposing the campus without losing the Penn State flag.”
Failing that, the campus could be repurposed for recreational and residential use, and the campus’s Forker Laboratory is “pretty modern” and could be utilized by the manufacturing community, Wilt says. The buildings also could be attractive for use by a community college.
“I would anticipate by January, February, March of 2026, we’d probably be having a lot more discussions with them about what we’re doing next,” he says.
Downtown Sharon
Sharon Community Development Corp. is taking a lead role in economic development in the city, particularly its downtown, Urban says. The CDC is finishing up its façade program, which has about $10,000 remaining, and the city was awarded a business improvement grant to assist property owners with addressing fire and building code issues.
Part of that effort is applying to Pennsylvania for an official Main Street designation, which would open Sharon to additional funding. More importantly, the process would provide a roadmap for downtown for the next five year, she adds.
The five-year strategy being developed has three main focus areas, she says. The first is to create a “vibrant downtown” where businesses are successful and where people want to visit. The second is looking at how Sharon can continue to evolve as an epicenter for traditional and alternative health and wellness, capitalizing not only on existing assets such as the Shenango River but also building and attracting businesses that feed on that
focus.
The third piece is looking at the city’s emerging arts and entertainment culture and how to foster it though the types of businesses the city is attracting and events being hosted, she says. The goal is to have that roadmap and the Main Street application completed by the end of the year.
The strategy being formed will focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs, and “having the entrepreneurial ecosystem to support new businesses that are moving in, to support existing businesses to thrive,” she says. The goal is to create an “overall vibe” of a “quaint downtown that people want to come and visit, where they can get great things to eat, shop in a variety of unique retail stores and experience arts and entertainment like they can’t in other parts of the region,” she says.
“We are also trying to enhance the design of downtown and look at ways to just create a more inviting, welcoming and inclusive atmosphere down there and activating those spaces, looking at how to utilize the green space more,” she adds.
Part of Penn-Northwest’s plan includes integrating a concept called economic gardening, Wilt says. The concept was launched by Christian Gibbons, who was doing economic development work in the Rocky Mountains region and was trying to figure out how to diversify the economy of a town that had been focused on a single industrial sector.
“What economic gardening does is it looks for companies that are already operating within a certain geographic area that are poised for growth, if they had the right data in terms of what growth potential is out there, in either new customer acquisition, new technology or new lines of business that are ancillary to the ones that they’re already in,” Wilt says. “So, if you’re already producing this product, with a little tweak here, or the addition of a machine or a line, you can be producing another product for a completely different industry sector.”
Starting in July, Penn-Northwest partnered with Gibbons and his program, and is looking for companies that are between $1 million and $15 million in sales, and between 10 and 100 employees, Wilt says. Penn Northwest then will connect them with the economic gardening team, which will conduct “intense data research” into the businesses, their competitors and areas they are not engaged in yet.
Penn-Northwest will pay for the data collection for the first five companies that sign up, and a parallel program is being considered targeting smaller businesses in targeted areas, he adds. The goal is to generate organic growth within the county from companies that are already here, rather than investing in advertising and recruiting, and trying to convince other companies to move here.
The city of Sharon also is in the process of finalizing a new comprehensive plan, Urban says. The 10-year plan, which looks at neighborhoods and overall quality of life as well as the downtown, is out for public comments, which are due in mid-August.
“We’ve already had some really great feedback,” she says. She expects the city planning commission to present the plan to Sharon’s city council in early fall.
Once the plan is approved by the city, the commission then would be charged with overseeing its implementation and referencing it to make sure the partners that are intended to take the lead on components of it do so.
“Obviously, dynamics change over the course of six months, let alone 10 years,” she says. “So, it’s a road map that we anticipate will have some changes along the way, and when opportunities arise, priorities will rise to the top that we hadn’t thought about before.”
Pictured at top: Rod Wilt, executive director of Penn-Northwest Development Corp.