$81M investment to create 300 jobs in New Kensington, Arnold industrial park

Jun 13, 2023

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A new manufacturing operation will create 300 full-time jobs over the next three years in the New Kensington Advanced Manufacturing Park, local and state leaders announced Monday.

Re:Build Manufacturing’s facility will comprise parts of five existing buildings previously used by Siemens and will total 175,000 square feet once complete.

The $81 million total investment includes $18.75 million in state grants and loans, Gov. Josh Shapiro said during the announcement at Acrisure Stadium on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. Shapiro did not accompany other officials who later visited the park.

“This enabling investment in this site will allow us to not just support Re:Build’s investment, but will also allow us to spur on future investment at that site,” Shapiro said.

Re:Build has pledged to invest at least $50 million in the project, Shapiro said. It will be the first ground-up manufacturing facility for Re:Build, touted as a leader in bringing high-tech manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

“Re:Build will focus on cutting-edge innovation in growing industries that are key to this region’s economic success, industries like energy, robotics, aerospace and biotech,” Shapiro said. “They’re also going to give workers the skills they need to succeed and compete in the jobs of today and tomorrow, providing workers with the training they need for these high-tech jobs.”

Victor Mroczkowski, executive vice president of operations for Re:Build, said they could not yet announce what will be built there. However, he said the company plans to begin hiring this summer with production starting in the fourth quarter of this year.

A push for ‘quality jobs’

Jeff Wilke, chairman of Re:Build and a Pittsburgh native, said it’s time to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and Western Pennsylvania after nearly four decades of decline.

“Re:Build is a special company. It’s being purpose built to add to the manufacturing capacity of our country, that can serve as a supplier to those who are building new, innovative, complex things like new aircraft and UAVs, new cars, new power plants, new medical devices and so much more,” he said.

“Our plan here at the New Kensington Advanced Manufacturing Park is to build full-scale production lines that we develop for our own businesses and with partners and our subsidiaries across the country,” Wilke said. “It will truly be home for the most important part of what we do, which is to make things that make peoples’ lives better.”

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Re:Build won’t try to compete with foreign manufacturers who, Wilke said, depend on low wages, scant environmental regulations and theft of intellectual property.

“Rather, we’ll compete because we will arm our incredibly skilled team members in our plants with the latest advances in material science, computer science, AI, machine automation and advances in mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering,” he said. “We won’t have to pay to ship product across vast oceans, and we’ll have the advantage of living in the same communities as our most important customers.”

Wilke said he met Re:Build CEO Miles Arnone more than 30 years ago at a program then talking about how to encourage more things to be made in America.

“As a country, we’ve sort of engaged in this consensual delusion for about 40 years that it was more important to have cheap fittings than to have quality jobs,” Arnone said. “We’ve seen the impact of that on our country these last decades as we watched our companies feed China and help them build their economy at our own expense and the expense of people that live in communities like Western Pennsylvania.”

Whether triggered by covid or not, Arnone said the nation has awakened to what’s really important — bringing people into the American dream through meaningful work.

“What we hope to achieve here in establishing this facility is bring many hundreds of important, high-skill manufacturing jobs where people can, over the long term, build their own economic story, where they can participate in the American dream by gaining skills, improving their productivity, increasing their wages and creating that virtuous cycle that builds communities,” he said.

Failures in the supply chain became evident at the start of the pandemic, Wilke said. With the support of a board including lead investor and board member Thomas Tull, a small group of “patriotic investors” raised money to rebuild the U.S. manufacturing base, first through acquisition and now direct investment.

“I believe that being able to make things again in this country is extremely important not only for jobs and economic development but, frankly, for national security,” Tull said. “We have to be able to make sure that we’re resilient and prepared for just about anything.”

Revitalization a big draw

Re:Build selected the Pittsburgh area, and specifically the New Kensington-Arnold area, over other locations around the city and over other competing states, Mroczkowski said. Other cities considered included Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit and Milwaukee.

New Kensington Mayor Tom Guzzo said he started working a year ago with Re:Build representatives, who he said fell in love with the city.

“It could have been us, it could have been Cleveland, it could have been Akron,” Guzzo said.

When the company’s representatives asked him why New Kensington, Guzzo said he told them because they’ll be part of the city’s story and its revitalization.

“This puts it over the top because we’re able to offer 300 jobs to our people from the Alle-Kiski Valley,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. It’s all about the entire Valley. It’s not about one particular city as opposed to another, it’s about the Valley.”

Arnold Mayor Joe Bia II said having well-paying jobs that people can build careers and lives around is a phenomenal opportunity.

“This is a major reinvestment into our towns,” he said. “This is something that hasn’t been there since Alcoa was there.”

Renovation of the site already is underway, Mroczkowski said. The space is said to be in serious disrepair and will require $31 million in renovations, which will be paid for with grants or loans from the state, county, Richard King Mellon Foundation and Westmoreland County, along with equity investments from the Regional Industrial Development Corp. and the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp.

The two development corporations have entered into a purchase agreement with the park’s current owner, the Redevelopment Authority of the City of New Kensington, to acquire and redevelop the entire site. The redevelopment authority bought the park, previously known as the Schreiber Industrial Park, in 2018.

Originally built and occupied by Alcoa, the 70-acre park spanning New Kensington and Arnold has 1.1 million square feet of space. Current manufacturing tenants include Affival and Filterbuy.

“Re:Build’s decision to locate in New Kensington Advanced Manufacturing Park is a tremendous catalytic opportunity,” RIDC President Donald Smith Jr. said. “The presence of a high-quality, innovative force in the manufacturing sector, bringing hundreds of jobs to this community, could be a spark for investment in the region.”

Smith said they’ve had a great partnership with Westmoreland County, including their success with the Westmoreland Innovation Center, previously home to Volkswagen and Sony in East Huntingdon.

“We’re starting off with a great tenant in Re:Build, and we’re certainly excited to see their impact on the community,” said Jason Rigone, executive director of the Westmoreland County IDC. “But we’re also excited about the prospect of modernizing the other 85% of this 1.1 million-square-foot facility to attract similar high-quality businesses and jobs to the Alle-Kiski Valley.”

‘New prosperity’ ahead

Based in Massachusetts, Re:Build Manufacturing employs more than 850 people across 11 business units with facilities there and in New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Colorado and California.

Shapiro said Pennsylvania is prepared to show other states it’s ready to be competitive again and will show that in New Kensington.

“These investments and our collective work on this project mark the beginning of a new chapter for communities like New Ken and Arnold, small communities that have a rich legacy of manufacturing but haven’t seen this kind of investment for decades,” he said.

“Today, thanks to Re:Build’s commitment and belief in Western Pennsylvania, these communities will once again be at the vanguard of manufacturing and innovation and with it these communities will see new jobs, new prosperity; they will support their schools and help maintain their roads, and their parks and their local police.”

But Shapiro said Pennsylvania often is at a disadvantage compared to other states he said devote more resources to economic development and the incentives that drive such investments. While Pennsylvania has 1.5 million more people than Ohio, he said Ohio provides more than seven times the amount of economic incentives to encourage businesses to relocate and grow there.

“We need to catch up,” he said. “We need to build on the momentum that we’re seeing here with this Re:Build announcement. We need to take the fight to Ohio and every other state in the nation and show that we can be the leader on economic development.”

Brian C. Rittmeyer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Brian by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .

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