MERCER, Pa. – Mercer County officials are optimistic that they will be able to find a new end user for a 200-acre site in East Lackawannock Township that had been under consideration for a nearly 1 million-square-foot distribution center.  

InSite Real Estate Group LLC, the site selector that had been working with local officials on the project, informed county commissioners around close of business Monday afternoon that the potential end user it was representing no longer planned to move forward with the project, Mercer County Commissioners Bill Finley and Ann Coleman reported.

The end user, which has not been identified, had considered plans to construct a 930,000-square-foot sorting center on county-owned land near Exit 15 of Interstate 80. Job creation figures for the center, once operating, have ranged between 1,000 and 2,000 positions. 

“They’re changing market strategies and how they handle some of their business,” Finley said. The changes the company is making to its business model “made the facility that they were originally planning on putting there obsolete,” he added. 

“It’s certainly a setback,” said Rod Wilt, executive director of Penn-Northwest Development Corp. Though a sales agreement was in place, there was no guarantee that what has been referred to as “Project Cake” would move forward.  

Both commissioners expressed optimism about finding another developer for the property. Much of the site and title work to make the land project-ready already has been completed in anticipation of the sorting center, Coleman said. The property is one of the larger sites in the northern Pennsylvania region that has the kind of transportation infrastructure assets it does.

“A lot of site development work was already done on the project by the previous end user, so we are going to benefit from that,” she continued.   

In addition, much of the leg work for getting public water to the site – which now is served by a drilled well – already has been completed, and the project is ready to go out to bid, Finley said. The engineering is done, permits through the Army Corps of Engineers to cross wetlands are in place and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has approved a territory expansion by Aqua Pennsylvania.    

“Those are some pretty big hurdles that weren’t accomplished before. Those were all done at the cost of this company that was looking at the property,” he added. “So when I say we’re optimistic, it’s because that company has spent several million dollars investing in getting this property more value, making it more valuable. So we’re going to take that as an opportunity to march forward and find the next customer for it.”

Wilt agreed. 

InSite “left the site better than they found it, without any taxpayer dollars being spent,” he said. “They have paid for a lot of the pre-development for the site. We know what it’s going to cost to bring electric, water, sewer and gas to the site. Now we know that the soil compaction is good.”  

The land remains under option through May 2027 with InSite, which is aggressively marketing it to other prospective end users, Coleman said.   

“It’d be great to have one large facility there,” she remarked.  

Finding a single end user will be the hard part, Finley acknowledged. In the day since word got out about the previous project not moving forward, he said he already has been contacted by another group that was interested in purchasing 25 acres to develop.

“We’re going to explore all the options,” he said. The property remains under option to InSite for the next year, but county officials will “work hand in hand” with the company “to make something happen out there.”      

InSite has a list of potential end users that expressed interest in the property as a backup, Wilt said. Based on the requests for proposals that Penn-Northwest receives for projects, the site, with all the work that has been done on it, “checks a lot of boxes” for a potential single user.

“So we just start working that list and kind of start on second base now instead of starting in the dugout,” he said. “It’s not optimal. It just extends the timeline, but I think we’ll have a lot of action and activity on the site.”