Let's make a deal at the old golf course
By John Loftus
Times Staff Writer
The Island Green Golf Course is closed, but the property is not yet in the hands of an international pharmaceutical company whose executives announced in October that they want it for their North American distribution center.
So where does the deal stand? The answer: They're working on it.
Generic-drug manufacturer Teva's plan to build a huge facility on the property at the Bustleton/Somerton border with Lower Moreland was announced a few days before the 2010 mid-term elections by the company, then-Gov. Ed Rendell, Mayor Michael Nutter and several Northeast Philadelphia officeholders.
Teva was promised almost $5 million in government incentives with the expectation that the Israeli company would spend $300 million to build and equip the million-square-foot center and bring up to 600 construction jobs to the city as well as 400 permanent positions when the facility opened in mid-2013.
Rendell, who left office in January, has said the government investment in the deal would pay off 60-to-1. Teva, among the world's largest producers of generic drugs, has been a growing company, Rendell said.
The project is on track, but as with any big enterprise, things take time, said Duane Bumb, assistant director of the city's commerce department. Still, he said in a phone interview last week, Teva should have "shovels in the ground by fall."
Island Green's digital sign on Red Lion Road reads that the course is now closed, and a few of the huge poles that hold up the netting on the driving range are cracked and have fallen.
Bumb said acquisition of the property from owner White Pine Partners depends on getting zoning and use permits and approval of a storm-water management plan. On March 11, he said, the Philadelphia Water Department approved a conceptual plan. That approval is required before the city can issue a zoning and use permit.
Teva spokeswoman Denise Bradley, in an e-mail to the Northeast Times, said the company hopes to close on the property as soon as possible. The Island Green acreage, once the site of a Budd Co. rail-car plant, spans parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery counties. Bradley said Teva is looking to acquire the 136 acres in Philadelphia. Most of the property fronts Red Lion Road.
According to Office of Property Assessment online records, the golf course, at 1 Red Lion Road, is owned by White Pine Partners L.P. of Mitchell Street in Philadelphia. The property was purchased by White Pine in 2001 and generates more than $113,000 in annual real estate taxes. No back real estate taxes are owed. The parcel has industrial zoning, and its market value is listed by the city as $4.2 million.
Before its designs on the tract were announced, Teva was exploring 150 acres at County Line Road and Limekiln Pike in Warrington, Bucks County. Bradley said Teva has not abandoned its interest in Warrington.
That echoes what William Marth, Teva's North American CEO, said in October. Teva won't stop trying to get into Warrington while it applies for all necessary city permits. But Marth had added that the Red Lion Road property "is our site."
Bumb said the promised millions in state grants and incentives have survived the transition from the Democratic Rendell administration to Gov. Tom Corbett's GOP regime.
Also unchanged, Bradley said, are Teva's plans for the property.
When the proposal was announced in October, the company said its distribution center would be 85 feet high. There will be three adjoining buildings that will have 1 million to 1.2 million square feet of space. Two of the storage buildings will be 85 feet high; the third structure, targeted for distribution and shipping, will be 45 feet high.
There will be no manufacturing on the property, which will be in operation 24 hours a day, five days a week. The facility's design will include the potential for expansion.
Two-hundred jobs will be created to add to the more than 200 company positions that will be moved to Philadelphia from existing suburban facilities, Nutter and Rendell said in October. Teva will keep its corporate headquarters in North Wales, Pa., but will move all distribution from two other Pennsylvania locales, Kutztown and New Britain, to Philadelphia.
Between 400 and 600 jobs will be involved in Teva's construction, Nutter said. Those jobs, along with the company's permanent jobs, will generate a lot of wage taxes, Bumb said in the fall.
About 200 trucks per day are expected to head to the site when it's up and running, according to data supplied by Teva in October.
Plans to handle the truck traffic and the roadway volume created by employees are not expected to be altered, said Tim Spreitzer, spokesman for the project's developer, J.G. Petrucci of Asbury Park, N.J.
The idea is for most truck traffic to make right turns from Red Lion Road onto Sandmeyer Lane and enter the property at the rear. There currently is a traffic signal at the golf course's Red Lion Road entrance, and most employees will drive into the complex at that spot.
Most trucks will come from Philadelphia International Airport and New York and New Jersey ports. They will approach the property on Red Lion Road, arriving from Interstate 95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard.
Bradley said the company has not discussed its plans yet with area community groups. The property is in Somerton and borders Bustleton.
Reporter John Loftus can be reached at 215-354-3110 or jloftus@bsmphilly.com