Plant relocation, Sheetz in business park plans off I-81

A business park off Interstate 81 near Shippensburg is starting to take shape with one commercial tenant moving in and several industrial projects in the pipeline, including a local factory relocation.

Sheetz will be the first tenant in the United Business Park off Exit 24 in Southampton Township, Franklin County, this summer. The convenience store chain is erecting a store on a four-acre lot in the front of the park.

New Jersey-based Matrix Development Group, which signed a contract last year to purchase 205 acres in the park, is expected to close on that land deal this week, according to Dave Sciamanna, executive director of the Chambersburg Area Development Corp. and the Cumberland Valley Regional Development Corp.

Matrix has been planning two distribution centers on the tract, both taking up more than 1 million square feet.

The 363-acre business park has been on the market since 2002 when CADC and the Shippensburg Area Development Corp. assembled the land and formed CVRDC to oversee the park.

Matrix officials were not immediately available for comment on the project.

CADC has its own plans to build a 12.5-acre lot for a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that it would lease to TST/Impreso Inc., a Texas-based paper products manufacturer with a Chambersburg factory.

The company would relocate its local workforce to the new facility, Sciamanna said. "If the project happens, the building needs to be ready for occupancy in the second quarter of 2017."

More than 140 acres is still available in a variety of potential lot configurations, capable of supporting building footprints up to as much as 500,000 square feet, said John Van Buskirk, principal and broker of record at Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania LLC, the Cumberland County-based firm marketing the park.

"While most of the remaining acreage is intended for industrial use, there is still a five-acre site immediately opposite Sheetz at the entrance to the park which is definitely commercial in nature," he said. "Given the 39,000-plus cars a day that pass Exit 24 of Interstate 81, we are targeting primarily restaurant and hospitality uses for that lot."

Source: Central Penn Business Journal