Elliott Group helps county development corp. save $2 million
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A domino effect that began with the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp.’s cleanup of the Monsour Hospital site has led to millions in savings, some of which will be put toward improvements at the Jeannette Industrial Park.
Using a combination of local, state and federal funding, the Monsour site was prepared for redevelopment and then sold for $2.1 million to Colony Holding for the Jayhawk Commons project, a mix of commercial, retail and office space.
Nearly a half-million dollars in proceeds from the Monsour sale was used to prepare the former Jeannette Glass property for redevelopment.
“It’s part of our mission to take on challenges like the Monsour site and the Jeannette Glass site,” said Jason Rigone, WCIDC director.
The 13.8-acre Jeannette Glass site required the demolition of old buildings and other site work to make the property “pad-ready” for construction.
That work was initially budgeted at $6 million. The price tag dropped by nearly $2 million, however, when officials from the Elliott Group announced that not only would they commit to buying the property, but that their specific plans — building a facility to test cryogenic pumps and expanders — eliminated some proposed infrastructure ugprades, IDC officials said.
The Elliott Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tokyo-based Ebara Corp., supplies compressors and turbines for liquefied natural gas plants. The pumps and expanders will be tested less than two miles away from Elliott’s headquarters in Jeannette.
Rigone said the IDC benefited from the Monsour project moving at a relatively brisk pace.
“By utilizing the grant funding we had available to us at Monsour, it afforded us the ability to reallocated leftover money to go towards redevelopment at the Jeannette Glass site,” Rigone said.
Both projects would have happened independently, “but by partnering with organizations like the DEP, Sen. (Kim) Ward’s office and (Gov. Tom Wolf’s) office, everything dovetailed very well,” Rigone said.
Cleanup at the Jeannette Glass site went so well that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency highlighted it as a “Brownfields Success Story” in a recent newsletter.
The reduced scope of the Jeannette Glass redevelopment project meant that the WCIDC was able to reinvest about $850,000 in grant money, along with about $88,000 from the Monsour sale, to help fund $1.1 million in improvements at the Jeannette Industrial Park.
Improvement will include new paving, roofing and interior work.