With the escalation of e-commerce and rising demand for
next day delivery, distribution centers and warehouses will continue their
advancement throughout the Greater Lehigh Valley.
This growth is most visible in Upper Macungie Township, where
dozens of large buildings are used to store and ship products all over the East
Coast and beyond.
Naturally, the industrial land in this part of Lehigh
County is dominated by the surge in truck traffic as volume rapidly increases.
But one shipping company, Uline, is looking to reduce the
amount of buildings it occupies in the township and consolidate its operations
into two properties.
Allied Building Corp. of Bethlehem has begun construction
on the two buildings totaling 1.6 million square feet of distribution space,
plus room for expansion to 2.2 million. The cost is $200 million, with an
expected completion in 2017.
The site is 100 percent leased to Uline, a
Wisconsin-based privately held, family owned distributor of industrial and
packaging materials for businesses throughout the nation and in Mexico and
Canada.
Company officials said by combining into two buildings on
the same campus, Uline will reduce the number of trucks on local roads and,
instead, send them directly to the adjacent Route 222 Bypass, which will get
upgrades as part of the project.
“By moving to this single-campus site, all that traffic
is contained to this site,” said Tim McDonough, branch manager for Uline, which
has had its main Valley location at 400 Boulder Drive for more than a decade.
“This project will cut our truck traffic in half.”
Uline trucks now on Boulder Drive, Route 100 and
Industrial Drive in Lehigh Valley Industrial Park West instead would go to the
new site, about a mile from 400 Boulder Drive, he added. Once the consolidation
and move occur, the four buildings Uline occupies, all within a one-mile
radius, will be going back to Liberty Property Trust to be leased, said Rachel
Arden, operations manager for Uline.
Liberty Property Trust, which has a Bethlehem site, is
the owner of the 200-acre development Liberty at Mill Creek at the southwest
corner of Mill Creek Road and the Route 222 bypass in Upper Macungie Township,
where Uline will move. A portion of the project on the Hamilton Boulevard side
is in Lower Macungie. The addresses for the two Uline buildings are 700 and 800
Uline Way.
Robert Kiel, senior vice president of Liberty Property
Trust, said exterior construction should be finished by next September.
Steel started to go up last week, and walls will start
going up this month, Arden said.
Barry Isett & Associates of Upper Macungie Township
is the engineer; the architect is James E. Baumgardner of Hanover, York County.
Kiel said Liberty Property Trust is funding improvements
to the Route 222 bypass. Nearly all the improvements are in Upper Macungie
Township.
“Liberty agreed to a $7 million upgrade to the
intersection at the Route 222 bypass,” McDonough said. “For us to do this
project; that had to be fixed.”
The Route 222 bypass is one of the most heavily traveled
roads in the region.
Uline has a 10-year lease at the new site and is
committed to the Valley, McDonough said.
Both buildings will be completed by the first quarter of
2017, and the company should be operational out of those two buildings by
spring 2017, he said.
Uline has 11 locations in North America, with more than
30,000 products in stock at each location. Materials shipped include virtually
anything an industrial user would need, from corrugated boxes and packing tape
to parking-lot bumpers, shrink wrap machines, scanners, trash cans and clothing
racks.
“We’ve been in the Lehigh Valley since 2004,” McDonough
said. “We started off in just this building, and every five years, we double
our business. Right now, we are at capacity in warehouse and distribution.”
At 400 Boulder Drive, Uline has 350,000 square feet of
warehouse space and 12,000 square feet of offices. At 8201 Industrial Blvd., it
has 188,000 square feet. At 7248 Industrial Blvd., there are 196,000 square
feet, while 200 Boulder Drive has 220,000 square feet.
At the start, the new home will have 1.6 million square
feet, but Uline could add as much as 600,000 square feet in a full build-out.
“We’ve got people in different buildings, inventory
spread out among four buildings; we got to a point where we couldn’t add any
more office staff,” McDonough said.
The new site allows the company to hire more office and
sales staff. Uline also will hire more employees based on the growth of the
business.
“This year, we added close to 70 people in the
warehouse,” McDonough said.
“We are hiring for our general growth,” Arden said.
While there are a lot of distribution centers throughout
the Valley, Uline officials said they were looking for a campus environment
with a lot of open space, which the Mill Creek project will offer.
“There were a lot of sites in the Lehigh Valley that we
visited when this became available,” McDonough said.
Air Products & Chemicals originally owned the site,
and as part of the construction, a new walking path will connect to an existing
one built for Air Products. The project also includes installing sidewalks to
promote walking.
“We thought, with the image they were looking to present
and the atmosphere, the environment, [it suited the company,]” Kiel said. “We
are going to have walking trails, ponds, sculptures. They were focused on the
environment. They are a great employer, very focused on their people.”
The company plans to add new technology to the Mill Creek
site. While some distribution processes are automated in its existing
buildings, Uline will add an automated United Parcel Service line for quicker,
more efficient operations.
“The new building allows us the space to open that up and
make it automated,” McDonough said. A higher percentage of its orders are these
parcel packages, he added.
The Mill Creek site also will have a fitness room,
upgraded cafeteria and two stories of office space that cover 36,000 square feet
per floor, he said.
In comparison, office space at its existing locations is
13,000 square feet, Arden said.
The company has office space in three of its four
buildings and uses warehouse space in all four buildings, she said.
“It will be a big upgrade for us; I think everyone is
excited about getting together,” Arden said. “It keeps us in the community.”
Employees will not be as spread out, opening
opportunities for managers to work better and interact among warehouse and
office workers, she said.
The coming Hamilton Crossings shopping center under
construction about a half-mile away should benefit Uline employees by providing
more retail options and places to eat lunch, she added.
Source: LVB
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