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JESSUP — The Valley View Business Park and the adjacent Jessup Small Business Center are among the premier locations along the I-81 Corridor for the development of Class A industrial, flex and office space.
These parks are growing because of their close proximity to I-81, I-84, and I-380, affordable real estate costs, tax incentives, and the ease with which tenants can recruit qualified labor. SLIBCO and The Scranton Plan have done a nice job positioning the parks for continued success.
Mericle has constructed two speculative flex buildings in Jessup Small Business Center and is finalizing plans to construct a flex building on a 14.57 acres site near the entrance to Valley View Business Park. The new flex building, which will also be constructed on speculation, will exceed 100,000 square feet and will be able to be divided in increments of 6,400 square feet.
The building will feature an attractive front facade with many windows, ceiling heights in excess of 30 feet, loading doors to the rear, and abundant on-site car and trailer parking. The building will be able to accommodate a wide variety of tenant types.
We have constructed more than one dozen flex buildings throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania including five in Lackawanna County. Our tenants in those buildings include manufacturing, distribution, office, and medical firms. The unique design of our flex buildings makes them suitable for just about any type of company.
A company seeking a business park to house their operations typically goes through a multi-level site selection process that eventually leads them to a preferred location. Every company is different, and some site selection factors are more important to some than to others, but in general, there are a handful of key factors that determine which communities and which business parks are the most successful.
These include quick highway access, skilled labor availability, competitive labor costs, affordable real estate, an attractive quality of life, low corporate tax rates, and the availability of state and local incentives and tax abatements.
The Jessup Small Business Center and Valley View Business Park receive good grades in most of these categories, which is why Mericle has chosen to construct buildings on speculation there. I think we are going to see a lot of jobs created in these parks over the next five years.