Coal downturn, commercial development highlight business stories in Greene Co.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held in April for the Greene County Memorial Hospital Foundation’s new EQT REC Center at EverGreene Technology Park.
The coal preparation plant and coal yard at the Emerald Mine in Waynesburg
The proposed Foundation Mine near Holbrook
The bridge and railroad overpass construction project on Route 19/21 at Morrisville
David Mastrostefano, a Sheetz engineer and project manager, displays the architectural rendering of the proposed new store on Route 21 at Jefferson Road.
1. Economic impact: Greene County’s economy went through a transition in 2016 after Alpha Energy shuttered its Emerald mine in November 2015 and laid off 235 miners, many of whom are still looking for work.
As painful as the decline of the coal industry has been for the county, there have been training opportunities for unemployed miners, although many have struggled to find new jobs that pay the high union wages offered in the mines.
According to the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, there were 7,350 men and women in Greene and Washington counties employed by the coal industry in 2015, with an average annual salary of $79,127.
The Pennsylvania CareerLink office in Waynesburg mobilized after the layoffs, informing the unemployed miners from Emerald what training options they had if they were not called to work at the company’s nearby Cumberland Mine operation.
Southwest Training Services offered as much as $8,000 per person in federal funding administered through CareerLink for the miners to attend training classes. The United Mine Workers of America would nearly match that dollar figure with a $7,000 stipend, bringing the total amount of available money to $15,000. Chevron, meanwhile, also pledged $100,000 to help with training.
Many used that money to obtain commercial driver’s licenses to work in the Marcellus Shale industry, although there were few trucking jobs available in that field during 2016.
By mid-May, the 26 weeks of unemployment compensation had run out for the miners and half of them were still without work by August. Greene County’s unemployment rate increased from 5.8 percent in December 2015 to 7.5 percent this October.
2. Energy: While the bankruptcy proceedings Alpha Energy underwent this year cost hundreds of miners their jobs, it also offered an opportunity for other energy companies to capitalize on Alpha’s lucrative assets.
Vantage Energy outbid Rice Energy for Alpha’s undeveloped Marcellus and Utica shale holdings, offering a cash bid of $339.5 million for the company’s 27,400 acres.
Meanwhile, Alpha’s first-lien lenders formed Contura Energy to purchase Alpha’s core assets as part of a bankruptcy reorganization plan. The company bought the rights to mine coal from Emerald’s sister operation at Cumberland Mine and a proposed Foundation Mine near Holbrook, although development of that site is still in question.
The newly formed company, however, meant a new union contract for UMW laborers at Cumberland, while also giving those union miners first rights at Holbrook if the Foundation coal is ever mined. The agreement includes a wage freeze over the next two years, but a wage reopener in August 2018.
“It keeps us alive,” said Chuck Kinsell, president of Cumberland Local 2300, which represents most of the union employees under the Contura agreement.
The fight to help retired union miners will continue into 2017, however. Thousands of UMW members rallied near Waynesburg in April demanding the federal government find a way to preserve their ailing pension fund and offer health-care benefits to retired miners who worked for company that went bankrupt.
The Miners Protection Act, which would take excess money from the Abandoned Mine Land Fund to buoy the union’s 1974 pension fund, has bipartisan support and was passed out of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in September, but it languished for the rest of the year without a vote. Republican leaders in the Senate have promised a vote on the bill in 2017, although Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made a similar promise to the UMW in September.
“He went back on his word,” UMW International District 2 Vice President Ed Yankovich said of McConnell’s promise. “We have the votes to pass it (the entire bill), but he reneged on his word.”
3. Commercial development: EverGreene Technology Park, located behind the Greene County Airport, secured a major tenant in July when it was announced that Community Bank would construct a back-office operations center there. The multimillion-dollar, 22,500-square-foot center will consolidate operations from several different facilities and be the home of about 70 bank employees.
Inside the same business park, a groundbreaking was held in April for Greene County Memorial Hospital Foundation’s new EQT Rec Center. The $6.5 million recreation center endured years in the planning and fundraising stages before the groundbreaking, although construction is being delayed after the foundation located another parcel at the park that is considered more suitable for the 60,000-square-foot center. The center will have a suspended walking and jogging track overlooking the soccer field, a basketball court, climbing wall, concessions area, community rooms and a 6,000-square-foot fitness center.
A few miles away, on High Street in Waynesburg, First Federal Savings and Loan moved forward with construction of a new office building next to its current bank at the site of the old Allison Building, which is considered the birthplace of Rain Day. The Allison Building, which was demolished in 2013, was thought to be one of the oldest buildings in downtown. The bank’s building project is the first new construction in the borough’s business district in many years.
4. Transportation: The state Department of Transportation completed an ambitious construction project on a notoriously dangerous intersection in Cumberland Township. The Bailey’s Crossroads intersection previously forced traffic traveling west along Route 21 to stop while eastbound traffic was given the right of way onto West George Street heading toward Carmichaels. The solution was a $5.125 million construction project giving Route 21 the right of way in both directions while creating a four-way intersection for George Street and Glade Run Road.
The other big transportation improvement in the county involves the railroad trestle and bridge construction project on Route 19/21 in Morrisville. The $15.1 million project is halfway done with construction of one rail trestle and the eastbound Route 19/21 bridge. Flooding Dec. 18 along Ten Mile Creek didn’t stop crews from continuing work on the other trestle and westbound side of the bridge. The project, which began in late 2013, is scheduled for completion in fall of 2017.
Another project to build a new four-way intersection connecting the Greene County Airport to Murtha Drive was nearly complete by the end of December. That project is designed to give traffic an easier entrance to the airport, which has open parcels near the parking lot that are under consideration for commercial development.
5. Retail: There was much excitement in Greene County in March 2015 when Applebee’s announced it would open one of its restaurants along Route 21 near Waynesburg. But as each month passed and the chain restaurant continued to delay breaking ground on the site at Greene Plaza, some wondered if the eatery would ever open.
Those hopes were dashed in July when the Observer-Reporter learned that the company had reversed course on those plans and wouldn’t be serving supper in Greene County after all.
“There were issues from a construction standpoint, and we just couldn’t come to terms,” said Mark Figurelli, the director of real estate for the company.
He did not say why the deal fell apart. The company has no immediate plans to open an Applebee’s restaurant at another location in Greene County, he said.
Meanwhile, another retail giant, Sheetz, announced it is expanding in Greene County.
The Altoona-based company wants to build a new gas station and convenience store near Murtha Drive, across from the Greene County Airport, although plans for that location have not been submitted to Franklin Township officials.
The company did receive approval to build a new store next to its current location at the Waynesburg Plaza at Route 21 and Jefferson Road. The nearly 6,000-square-foot building will be about 50 percent larger than the current store, which was built in 1999 and will be torn down. The other businesses in that plaza, including Yum Yum Diner, will have until July to find another location when construction begins on the new Sheetz.