Pennsylvania Township Transforms Into Logistics Hub With More Than 100 Football Fields of Warehouse Space
Just a few miles off Route 22 in Allen Township, Pa., quarter horses gallop through a pasture and farmers tend to soil that will soon sprout corn. By summer, fields of wildflowers will bloom, giving motorists off the beaten path a pleasing dose of nature.
That scene will soon be harder to find as a township blanketed with farmland and green open space becomes the Lehigh Valley's epicenter for warehouse development. Plans are in the works for 6.5 million square feet of the kind of massive distribution centers that line Interstate 78 and Route 100 — imagine warehouses stretching across more than 100 football fields.
The $335 million FedEx Ground project under construction is just the start of what could be 13 cavernous warehouses built in the next few years. They will put thousands more cars and trucks in the township every day and millions of tax dollars into the Northampton Area School District. But the dizzying pace with which they're being proposed has even township officials worried about how Allen's slice of nature might disappear.
FedEx ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.
And yet, it was township officials who unintentionally paved the way, by carving out hundreds of acres of new industrial areas on the zoning map.
"No one ever figured the letter I on a zoning map would lead to so many giant warehouses," said Larry Oberly, Allen supervisors chairman, who was elected in 2014. "When they rezoned 16 or 18 years ago, it was to create jobs and tax base. They couldn't have predicted this."
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"This" is a warehousing boom that has the Lehigh Valley, with its robust interstate system, attractive workforce and prime Northeast location, becoming one of the nation's fastest growing areas for warehouse and distribution centers. The mega-buildings are fueled by e-commerce, which has exploded as consumers demand goods delivered in two days.
In 2000, the Lehigh Valley had less than 4 million square feet of warehouse buildings larger than 100,000 square feet. Now it has more than 40 million square feet and that could grow by more than 5 million square feet this year alone, said Lee Fittipaldi, senior associate of industrial services at Jones Lang LaSalle, a Chicago-based real estate investment company with offices in Bethlehem. Now that developers have exhausted space along some of the Valley's busiest interstates, they're looking for new places to build, Fittipaldi said.
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"It continues to be one of the hottest industrial development markets in the country," he said. "These companies want good access and the right zoning."
That's where Allen comes in. In 2000, it was a quiet, agricultural township of about 2,600 residents, bordering Lehigh Valley International Airport.
But change was coming as people moved west from crowded New York and New Jersey, and Allen officials wanted to prepare for it — maybe even take advantage of it. They decided to preserve the agricultural character in the northern part of the township, while rezoning hundreds of acres of corn, wheat and soybean fields south of Route 329.
They allowed for more high density residential units, making room for hundreds of apartments and townhouses that have been built. To pay for added services for those residents and the increased costs to the Northampton Area School District, township officials moved to expand the business tax base. They rezoned land closer to Airport Road and Route 22 for industrial and commercial use to make way for retail and manufacturing businesses, said longtime Planning Commission Chairman Gene Clater.
"We knew population growth was coming and we had to accommodate it," Clater said. "We were thinking light manufacturing, maybe some distribution, but a diverse mix. One thing we didn't foresee was 1 million square-foot warehouses. I don't think anyone did."
Well, that's exactly what Allen will soon be getting because those giant centers are permitted in the industrial zone, and with demand so high, it's all Allen is getting.
In addition to the 800,000 square-foot FedEx facility along Willowbrook Road, The Rockefeller Group of New York has submitted plans for a 1 million square-foot facility across Willowbrook Road from the FedEx Ground plant and could begin building that this year. It also has approval for a 300,000 square-foot warehouse just north of the FedEx plant. And FedEx officials have said the main plant could be expanded to 1.2 million square feet within a few years.
In addition, Liberty Property Trust has conditional approval to build three warehouses with a total of 1.5 million square feet on 125 acres at Route 329 and Howertown Road, near the former LaFarge cement quarry, Township Manager Ilene Eckhart said.
Developer David Jaindl, in partnership with California-based Watson Land Co., has proposed as many as seven warehouses totaling as much as 2.5 million square feet on 290 acres on the northeast side of Route 329 and Howertown Road. Both of those are under review but not approved.
"We have seen keen interest in that site," Jaindl said. "But we are a long way from construction."
All that adds up to as many as 13 warehouses, totaling 6.5 million square feet. Traffic studies show that will put 20,000 more vehicles a day on township roads, including more than 4,000 tractor-trailers. And there is little the township can do to stop it from happening, as long as the new projects are in line with the zoning ordinance.
Still, it's not exactly what Stephen and Michole Pignato had in mind 10 years ago when they moved from Bethlehem Township to Country Road to start their family in Allen Township. Close to the Valley's major highways but with a country feel, it was the perfect place to raise their sons, Michole Pignato said. Until the FedEx construction began last year, she said her biggest concern while driving along Willowbrook Road was that a deer would dart from one of the many cornfields.
She was among the 200 people who attended public meetings to try to stop the FedEx project but was told by township officials she no longer trusts that because the project met zoning laws, it could not be halted.
"We tried to stop it and we lost," said Michole Pignato, a library teacher at Franklin Elementary in Northampton. "I'll miss driving by the fields. At least I don't have to worry about the deer anymore, I guess."
