Last Lot Standing: Greater Pittston Chamber eager to sell land in Duryea

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Greater Pittston Chamber’s Women’s Network membership at 500-plus

<p>PITTSTON &#8212; On a sunny June afternoon, three major cogs turning the wheels of the Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce&#8217;s successes reflected on the first 99 years of the organization&#8217;s existence.</p><p>Former Executive Vice President Rosemary Dessoye and erstwhile project engineer Walter Poplawski, of A + E Group, Inc., traded tales from the past, while current Executive Vice President Michelle Mikitish shared her vision of the future.</p><p>The Greater Pittston Chamber was incorporated on June 20, 1920, and next summer marks a huge milestone for the organization. Many of the chamber&#8217;s wins stemmed from the creation of the region&#8217;s four prominent business parks &#8212; Barnum, Grimes, O&#8217;Hara and Quackenbush &#8212; and one residential development.</p><p>As the next century of growth and development kicks off, Mikitish presented the Chamber&#8217;s four-fold plan aimed at mirroring the progress of the past 100 years.</p><p><strong>Past Productivity </strong></p><p>Both Dessoye and Poplawski firmly agreed that it would be impossible to define the chamber&#8217;s past victories without highlighting the efforts of the late John &#8220;Jack&#8221; Grimes. Grimes served as the chamber&#8217;s EVP for about two decades beginning in the 1980s, and his colorful approach to deal-making helped lure many employers &#8212; both large and small &#8212; to the Greater Pittston area.</p><p>Dessoye said a major factor in convincing companies to set up shop locally was Grimes&#8217; ability to quickly slice through red tape. She recalled a time in 1969 when Grimes initially pitched a German executive on an undeveloped site in Duryea.</p><p>For the following five decades, that tract of land has been home to the current Schott glass manufacturing plant &#8212; the first of five more to follow in the United States. That day, Grimes shared a post-meeting handshake with the company&#8217;s liaison. The next day, excavation for the new production facility began &#8212; a feat unimaginable in 2019.</p><p>Poplawski, recruited by Grimes, added that in the 1980s, Pittston Township&#8217;s Eastern Distribution Center and the adjacent Vogelbacher Industrial Park caused some logistical confusion among suppliers and delivery personnel. When the decision to consolidate the parks came down, renaming the new entity after Grimes &#8212; whose unconventional prospecting efforts created more than 5,000 local jobs &#8212; was a no-brainer.</p><p>The Grimes Industrial Park now stands as one of the four mainstays of the Greater Pittston Chamber&#8217;s economic development endeavors. The following snapshots profile that park, a housing development and two other industrial zones within the Greater Pittston confines.</p><p><strong>Barnum Industrial Park - Blueberry Hill Development </strong></p><p>In 1896, the Barnum &amp; Bailey Circus toured the country featuring a &#8220;horseless carriage&#8221; known as the Duryea motor wagon, one of the first gasoline-powered automobiles produced in the United States.</p><p>Any perceived connection between &#8220;the greatest show on Earth&#8221; and the Barnum parcel that became Duryea Borough&#8217;s Blueberry Hill development is purely coincidental, however. The residential development sits on the former site of the Barnum anthracite coal mine and colliery that operated from 1879 until 1964 and adjacent to the Barnum Industrial Park.</p><p>The borough itself was named after a former Civil War general who owned land along the shores of the Lackawanna and Susquehanna rivers in the late 1800s.</p><p>After Hurricane Agnes wreaked havoc on Northeastern Pennsylvania in 1972, the Barnum site became a temporary home for HUD trailers earmarked for residents displaced by the flooding. For about 20 years, a vast stretch of the land remained vacant and had little utility, save for the occasional impromptu teenage gathering.</p><p>In the late 1990s, Popple Construction purchased the approximate 124-acre parcel and what began as a proposed modular home project blossomed into an expanse of single-family detached dwellings.</p><p><strong>Grimes Industrial Park </strong></p><p>In 2004, the TJ Maxx distribution center in the Grimes Industrial Park, at 1 million square feet in area, was estimated to be the fifth-largest tilt-up construction project in the world. In short, this type of construction requires the concrete walls of the facility to be formed on the ground, cured and then lifted in place or &#8220;tilted up&#8221; with cranes to erect the building&#8217;s exterior. Other tenants in the park include FedEx, USHydrations, Cascades Tissue Group, and Stephenson Equipment.</p><p>Naturally, the namesake of the complex had an instrumental role in convincing company execs to conduct business in the Greater Pittston area. Poplawski said Grimes had a casual approach to negotiating with the many C-level execs he encountered. With a revolving door of prospects, names sometimes escaped him. So, Grimes would frequently refer to his counterparts as &#8220;cuz&#8221; &#8212; a colloquial term often used by Greater Pittstonians to convey respect and admiration.</p><p><strong>O&#8217;Hara Industrial Park</strong></p><p>Scott Linde, president of Linde Corporation, has seen his business expand from 8 employees in 1970 to more than 300 in 2019. The company began operations in 1965 with some outmoded construction equipment Linde picked up from his grandfather. Like many other local construction businesses, Linde&#8217;s growth phase took flight in the aftermath of Agnes when the company helped restore normalcy to the infrastructure of the local river valleys.</p><p>In the past decade, forays into the Marcellus shale gas boom have kept the revenue flowing and Linde recently finished construction on its corporate headquarters in the O&#8217;Hara Industrial Park. The park is named after Vincent O&#8217;Hara, former Pittston Chamber board president and also secretary of the Pittston City Merchants Bureau in the mid to late 50&#8217;s. Once spread over three counties, Linde has simplified operations by settling into its new home between the CenterPoint Park to the east and the Grimes Park to the west.</p><p><strong>Quackenbush Industrial Park </strong></p><p>Back in 1978, Binghamton-based Cook Brothers sensed an opportunity south of its base of operations in New York&#8217;s southern tier. The 100-year-old heavy truck-parts business chose a site along Oak Street in Pittston Township to serve the markets of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area. That move helped establish the Quackenbush Industrial Park as a viable business location, drawing neighboring businesses such as RLS Logistics, TJ Cannon and Praxair Welding.</p><p>Like many wholesale businesses and distribution centers before and after it, Cook Brothers benefits from a location situated minutes from major highways such as Interstate 81 and 84 as well as the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The logistical cake is iced by Greater Pittston&#8217;s proximity to the ports of New York and the major metro hub of Philadelphia, each locale only about a two-hour drive from NEPA.</p><p><strong>Expanding Horizons </strong></p><p>The next century of possibilities for the Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce beckons. And while land development may not sit at the top of the agenda, the organization is marketing a land parcel to develop a Keystone Opportunity Zone property in Duryea near McAlpine Street.</p><p>The Greater Pittston Chamber now sets sights on educating, training and employing the local workforce, especially with regard to skills training. New technology and an exodus of skilled employees will create a labor crunch, of more than 9,300 unfilled positions expected by 2023, according to a 2018 Talent Report prepared by The Institute of Public Policy &amp; Economic Development at Wilkes University.</p><p>Mikitish hopes Greater Pittston can help plug that gap by readying prospective employees, attracting new commerce and bolstering the bottom lines of retail, service, and manufacturing businesses that already call the region home.</p><p><strong>Future Fanfare</strong></p><p>Primarily, the chamber plans to further engage the current membership by offering more value-added benefits. The existing membership package already includes a variety of networking opportunities, free marketing and publicity campaigns, along with discounts from insurance carriers and energy suppliers.</p><p>Adding to the mix, Mikitish says the team plans to aggressively promote &#8220;member-to-member&#8221; discounts and public &#8220;hot deals&#8221; &#8212; discounted member products and services readily available to the public on the Chamber&#8217;s website.</p><p>Since the U.S. Small Business Administration counted 30.4 million companies that employ 500 people or less in 2015, Mikitish intends to foster improved awareness of small business. The Chamber will pursue increased educational opportunities for owners and employees, as well as create initiatives for greater advocacy in the segment.</p><p>No regional Chamber boasts as large a Women&#8217;s Network as Greater Pittston. Hoping to capitalize on that strength, Mikitish expects heightened community service activity to result from increased interactions with the region&#8217;s professional women.</p><p>Lastly, the Chamber will focus on job-creation and placement opportunities for local residents. Promoting career exploration events at regional high schools and leveraging the benefits of the statewide apprenticeship programs will continue as goals of the organization.</p><p><strong>About the Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce</strong></p><p>The Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce engages about 425 members and serves the Greater Pittston Area which includes 13 different municipalities and two school districts, Pittston Area and Wyoming Area. These municipalities cover approximately 64 square miles and have a combined population of just under 50,000 people.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Thom Tracy </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/web1_Thom-Tracy.jpg</photo0><caption0>Thom Tracy </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/web1_PITTSTON-CHAMBER-MEMBERS.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Members of the 2019 Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/web1_PITTSTON-CHAMBER-MEMBERS.jpg</photo1><caption1>Members of the 2019 Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Thom Tracy</p><p>Guest Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Thom Tracy is a content developer, competitive researcher and market strategist for a large-cap Silicon Valley software purveyor.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce — 99 years of community service