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BLIGht Or BOOM? Warehousing in
Cumberland County
day twO Of a three-day serIes
The Sentinelsunday, June 1, 2014 Carlisle, Pa. • $1.75
The Sentinel’s three-day se-ries on warehousing in Cum-berland County will feature a number of topics and areas of discussion in the debate.
• Saturday’s issue featured an introduction to our series with a look at what warehouses mean to Cumberland County’s econ-omy and what concerns the opposition have. There was also information about the jobs out-look at warehouses and what officials see with truck traffic in the county.
• Today’s issue focuses on information on air quality in
Cumberland County and how the intersection of major high-ways could turn the county into a future inland port. The Sen-tinel also takes a closer look at who Goodman Birtcher is and what the developer has brought to other sites across the country.
• Monday’s issue will focus on the concern of warehouse vacancies across the county, as well as the alternative to ware-housing — retail, and how that fits into the discussion. The Sentinel will also take a look at the history behind some of the warehousing in Cumberland County and a current debate in Penn Township with a poten-tially new warehouse.
Read The Sentinel’s print edi-tion or read the stories online at www.cumberlink.com.
Jason Malmont/The Sentinela tractor-trailer’s pipe.
Michael Bupp/The Sentinelthe ames Companies warehouse facility in south Middleton township.
who is Goodman Birtcher?Developer aims to stay local, help community
By Tammie GittThe Sentinel
CARLISLE — The name Goodman Birtcher burst into the consciousness of Cum-berland County residents last
summer with n e w s o f i t s plan to build a m u l t i m i l -lion-square-foot logistics center strad-dling the bor-ders of Carlisle borough and Dickinson and
South Middleton townships.The plan brings a global play-
er in the logistics industry to the Midstate in an early project in its collaboration with a Cali-fornia-based, fifth generation development company.
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By Samantha MadisonThe Sentinel
Government officials have credited fine particulate mat-ter or PM2.5 for environmental issues, including acid rain and haze, but it’s the argued effects on health that have those op-posed to warehouse develop-ment the most concerned.
Health concerns were among the issues brought up during the meetings surrounding the pro-
posed Goodman Birtcher ware-house development planned on land that sits in Carlisle and Dickinson and South Middleton townships.
In late February, Dr. Rebecca Bascom, a pulmonary special-ist and professor at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, presented a report to Dickinson Township and Carlisle Borough board members on the assess-ment of health risks posed by warehouses, mainly tied to the
increased tractor-trailer traffic and diesel emissions associated with the facilities.
In the report, she cited stud-ies that showed that long-term exposure to PM2.5 — which in national studies included dock workers and those in the truck-ing industry — were more likely to be diagnosed with lung can-cer or die at an earlier age.
Bascom said coarse particles are caught in the nasal passages and large airways, but fine par-
ticles are deposited in the air-ways and deep lung. That would affect respiratory functions and may exacerbate asthma or car-diac conditions.
B a sco m sa i d t h e G o o d -man Birtcher proposed ware-house would adversely affect those who visit Carlisle Re-gional Medical Center in South Middleton Township, many of
Will trucking and manufacturing change our air?
effects on air
quality
the port of Carlisle? Experts say an inland port could bring more jobs, warehouses and trucks to the region
By Daniel WalmerThe Sentinel
Carlisle is already a Mid-state transportation hub of national importance, but
could becoming an inland port provide more economic sta-bility and/or growth to the area?
When U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Ha-zleton — whose 11th Congressional Dis-trict includes part of Cumberland County — pro-moted the inland port con-cept in February 2013, oth-er local officials expressed
both excitement about an inland port’s potential for economic develop-ment and concern over how it would be funded.
T h e S e n t i n e l breaks down what inland ports are;
how the 20-year-old Vir-ginia Inland Port led to an
The SerieS: Day 2
Barletta
See Port, A5
Briggs
See Goodman, A5See Air, A8
By Samantha MadisonThe Sentinel
CARLISLE – One man was taken to the hospi-tal with multiple gunshot wounds after a shooting at the intersection of North Pitt Street and A Street in Carlisle on Saturday.
Carlisle Police Lt. Ste-phen Latshaw said offi-cers at the police station heard the shots that were fired and arrived at the scene to find the victim on the ground, losing a
lot of blood.It was unclear if there
were multiple suspects in-volved, however, there was at least one shooter, ac-cording to Latshaw. As of 10 p.m. Saturday, there was no description of the shooter, but police said they be-lieved the shooter fled the scene on foot toward Fair-ground Avenue, Latshaw said. They were uncertain if the shooter or shooters then got into a car.
Police had the K-9 unit o u t S a t u rd a y e ve n i n g
tracking evidence to try to find the suspect, he said.
“I don’t think that the residents need to be con-cerned right now about somebody running around,” Latshaw said. “We don’t think he’s running around. We think this is probably between individuals as op-posed to somebody just running around shoot-ing guns in the borough of Carlisle.”
The victim has been iden-tified as a black man around 40 years old, Latshaw said.
Man shot, taken to hospital
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influx of new jobs — with more warehouses and trucks — in the Front Royal region; and whether this concept makes sense for Carlisle.
Inland portsWhile inland ports are not
precisely defined, a report by commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle described them as “a hub designed to move international ship-ments more efficiently and effectively from maritime ports inland for distribution throughout the U.S. heart-land.”
Such facilities typically in-clude multimodal transpor-tation infrastructures to al-low freight to be transported from rail to trucks, a railroad hub, a Foreign Trade Zone, a diverse, broadly skilled work force, land availability and economic incentives, ac-cording to Ron Derven. who writes for Development magazine, a trade publica-tion of commercial real es-tate development association NAIOP.
For Barletta, current trends in retail transportation could make now the right time to create an inland port in Carlisle.
“This is coming (some-where) — this is going to hap-pen. All this freight and cargo is coming to the Northeast, and there will be a need for inland ports,” he said. “It could be an economic boost to the area for whoever has the vision.”
Inland ports are trending for several reasons, Derven wrote. The cost gap between truck transportation and rail transportation is narrow-ing, railroads are improving speeds, and companies want their products further inland. and closer to customers, ac-cording to Derven.
They are particularly pop-ular in the Midwest, but will potentially be in demand farther east as the Panama Canal is widened, according to information provided by NAIOP. That project, sched-uled to be completed by 2015, will double the canal’s capac-ity and allow larger vessels to travel through the canal to the East Coast.
One of the most ambi-tious intermodal ports is the 17 million-square-foot Al-liance Global Logistics Hub port in Alliance, Texas, which opened in 1989. The port serves as a confluence of two railway lines, three ma-jor highways, and even an airport complete with U.S. Customs agents. It is esti-mated to have a $43 billion economic effect on the area
and responsible for more than 31,000 jobs, according to information provided by NAIOP and commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.
Virginia Inland PortThe Virginia Inland Port is
not that ambitious, but offi-cials say it has played a criti-cal role in the local economy.
Located in the Shenandoah Valley town of Front Royal, which sits in western Virginia near Interstate 81, it’s a “pret-ty non-descript operation,” only about 140 acres in size, said Joe Harris, spokesman for the Virginia Port Author-ity. It has an office building in the front, a canopy-covered area in the back for unload-ing trains and loading trucks, and 8,000 feet of rail used by Norfolk Southern trains.
The Virginia Port Author-ity funded the creation of the port — which opened in 1989 and is strategically lo-cated near the intersection of I-81 and Interstate 66 — to help companies located to the northwest save money by not driving their trucks all the way to Norfolk to receive cargo, he said. The authority owns and operates the inland
port.Freight is unloaded at the
Norfolk port and carried via train to the inland port in Front Royal, where com-panies then unload it onto trucks to take it to its final destination, he said. Some companies also use the port in reverse, transferring freight from trucks on trains, he said.
“We did not know it would be an economic en-gine at all,” he said — and for years, it wasn’t. “People said it was an albatross. But then people started using it, and they found value in it. It’s matured and surpassed expectations.”
Jennifer McDonald, execu-tive director of the Warren County Economic Develop-ment Corp., said the port has served as a great marketing tool to attract businesses to the region. “It’s been a very positive thing for this com-munity,” she said.
Businesses attracted to the port are responsible for the creation of more than 6,000 jobs and several million dol-
lars in revenue to the region, Harris said. Home Depot built a warehouse of several hundred-thousand-square-feet nearby, and food ser-vice product marketer and distributor Sysco also built a large warehouse in the area, he said.
Harris said he hasn’t heard many negative reactions from the surrounding community, but said the port is not locat-ed near any residential areas. It has led to increased truck traffic in the region and gen-erated concerns about truck crashes and idling trucks, he said.
Port of Carlisle?The Carlisle area features
the prerequisites for an in-land port facility.
Like Front Royal, Carlisle is located near the intersection of two interstates, is in close proximity to several ma-jor cities, and has develop-able land for companies that could be enticed by an inland port, Barletta said.
Norfolk Southern would be open to the possibility of part-nering with additional inland ports, according to David Pid-geon, the rail service’s man-ager of public relations.
“We’re always looking for new business opportuni-ties, and if anyone presents a concrete proposal on an inland port, we’ll give it an honest and thorough look,” Pidgeon wrote in a state-ment.
Still, Barletta knows that start-up funding costs for the facility is a concern. Bar-letta is part of a panel in the U.S. House of Representa-tives that is looking into the idea of private-public part-nerships, and he’s working with that committee to de-velop ways to use such part-nerships to create inland ports, he said.
He stressed that he only wants Carlisle to become an inland port if that is what the community wants. Many business leaders and elect-ed officials are excited that the port could lead to high-er-paying jobs and a better economy in the region, he said, but he also understands that some people may not want the extra traffic.
“I’m looking at a long-term vision on how to at-tract jobs to an area. It’s go-ing to be up to the area to see if this is something good for them,” he said.
Email Daniel Walmer at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @SentinelWalmer
Continued from A1
Port
By Daniel WalmerThe Sentinel
Turning an inland port from con-cept to reality largely depends on two things: the development of a specific idea, and the necessary funding.
Joe Harris, spokesman for the Vir-ginia Port Authority, said any private or public entity could in theory cre-ate an inland port facility. However, they first would have to specifically choose a type of inland port based on the needs of the market and the sur-rounding area. The port could focus on domestic or foreign cargo, for ex-ample, and could create a rail yard, airport, or other facilities.
After envisioning a concept, the de-veloper likely would have to complete feasibility and economic studies dem-onstrating the project’s viability before
receiving financial support, Harris said. “There’s a million and one busi-ness plans out there,” he said. “(Lend-ing institutions) are going to want to see a hard-and-fast business plan.”
Even after a viable plan is estab-lished, determining funding sourc-es for the port can be tricky because a large number of public and private entities can eventually benefit, says a 2012 report developed by market trend analysis research firm RCG Econom-ics for the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
Of 37 case studies examined by RCG Economics, the majority received sig-nificant public aid or loan support, of-ten including federal funding. How-ever, some inland ports have been financed mainly through private in-vestments, the report stated.
While there is no state or federal
designation required to create an in-land port, there are specific federal funds available to help create inter-modal hubs such as inland ports, ac-cording to the report. State govern-ments would also have the ability to declare an inland port a tax-free zone, Harris said.
The developer also likely would want to request Foreign Trade Zone from the federal government, which provides international trade advan-tages such as duty-free treatment of international goods while they are in the Zone, the report stated.
After the funding is settled, an in-land port likely would involve the construction of a new facility with ga-rages, machinery and other technol-ogy needed to serve as a transfer point between different modes of transpor-tation, Harris said.
Keys to inland port creation
Michael Bupp/The SentinelInland ports serve as transportation hubs, re-ceiving cargo on trains and planes for companies to unload and distribute by trucks.
Warehouses
But local residents remain skeptical about the company’s stated desire to be part of the communities in which it es-tablishes its logistics centers.
Goodman Birtcher was formed in 2012 in a partner-ship between Goodman Group, based in Sydney, Aus-tralia, and Birtcher Develop-ment and Investments, a de-veloper with nearly 75 years of experience. The partnership marked Goodman’s entry into the North American market, combining its global fund management capability with the local market knowledge from Birtcher Development.
According to its website, Goodman has about 418 properties in 16 countries with an asset value of $23.2 million under its management.
Troy Briggs, northeast re-gional director of develop-ment for Goodman Birtcher, said it was important to Good-man CEO Greg Goodman that the company employ people who have been in the region, who know the area and who care about the community. Briggs has lived in Palmyra for 20 years and has raised four children there.
“All the areas we are looking at, I know,” he said. “I know all the communities we are go-ing into.”
Briggs said it is tough to find the right site for a warehouse, but he looks for those that are close to the interstate to allow trucks to get in and out quick-ly, without using secondary roads.
“The sites I select are where it will mitigate what’s coming anyway,” he said. “If a town-ship and community thinks about it, that’s where they want it to go.”
Much of the focus at mu-nicipal meetings has been on the jobs created by the com-panies leasing the buildings, but Briggs said Goodman is going to continue to create jobs as it hires its own staff to manage the facility.
“What you’re seeing in the industry itself is that they come in creating jobs and bringing along businesses that serve their companies,” Briggs said.
The Goodman approach marks a break from most de-velopers in that it owns, devel-ops and manages its proper-ties that have featured tenants such as Procter & Gamble, Kellogg, Georgia-Pacific, Amazon, Pepsi and Whirl-pool, Briggs said. In the past, developers would come in, entitle a site, build the facility and sell or lease it accordingly.
“They just have a different model than we do,” he said. “We’re going to be here. We’re going to be part of the local community.”
Briggs said they’ve already started to become part of the community by contributing to Dickinson Township’s fish-ing derby. The company has
committed $5,000 to Carl-isle’s fireworks display, and has also expressed an interest in working with the Down-town Carlisle Association to purchase digital video cam-eras to help combat graffiti.
The camera offer first came to light in February, at which time Carlisle borough coun-cilman Sean Shultz said such an offer was never discussed with the borough and that he would be uncomfortable with accepting the dona-tion because of the percep-tion it carries with it. He also said the company had been in contact with the Downtown Carlisle Association and the Greater Carlisle Area Cham-ber of Commerce to see what it could do for the community.
Goodman Birtcher also tries to partner with the companies that lease space in their build-ings, encouraging them to be-come part of the community as well, Briggs said.
“What I try to do is engage and go in tandem with them,” he said.
Nathan Wolf, a Carlisle at-torney who lives near the project site, remains skeptical about the company’s ambition to be part of the community. Unlike previous developers who didn’t seem to care about public sentiment, Goodman Birtcher has made an effort in that arena. While he appreci-ates that the company’s rep-resentatives have been “a bit less-condescending and ar-rogant” than those of past de-velopers, Wolf said Goodman Birtcher is in the business to make money.
“Who knows what they will do?” he asked.
If Goodman Birtcher claims to be a good neighbor, they have to recognize the effect of their actions on the quality of life in the area, Wolf said. They have to consider the environ-mental concerns and the loss of the sense of community as they proceed.
“Anyone that can move on with the project in the face of that, you have to wonder if they can possibly be good neighbors,” Wolf said.
Wolf said he also is con-cerned about statements company representatives have made to indicate they want to be the model for developing warehouses “the right way.” The implication of the state-ment, he said, is that there are more warehouses to come.
The proof of Goodman Birtcher’s intention to be part of the community and to mitigate the impact of the de-velopment on neighbors will come as the project advances, Briggs said.
“What we say we’re going to do, we’re going to do,” he said.
Continued from A1
Goodman
A8 • The Sentinel Sunday, June 1, 2014
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whom are more likely than others to suffer from condi-tions that could worsen with exposure to PM2.5.
“Proximity to the point source is very important,” Bascom told Dickinson Town-ship supervisors in February. “The fresh particles are the ones that go deep into the re-spiratory tract.”
Bascom and others argued that another warehouse would exacerbate a problem already prevalent in Cumberland County.
Air qualityThere are a number of sourc-
es of PM2.5, including certain industrial processes as well as types of combustion activities, such as those found in motor vehicles.
There is no data on what percentage of PM2.5 is caused by diesel exhaust compared to industrial processes, but gov-ernment officials say Cum-berland County’s air is clean-er than it has been after a few years of stricter emissions re-quirements and the institution of anti-idling laws.
To what extent Cumberland County’s air is clean, however, is up for debate.
Dean Van Orden, the assis-tant director of the Pennsyl-vania Department of Environ-mental Protection’s Bureau of Air Quality, said it’s no longer a question of “how bad the air quality is” but rather how good it is.
“...Actually, it’s in good shape,” Van Orden said. “Re-gardless of what the Ameri-can Lung Association says, we’re monitoring attainment of the air, meeting the federal air standard. So we think it’s good.”
According to Kevin Stewart, the director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlan-tic, the air quality in Cumber-land County is still a long way from acceptable. He said the state of the air is getting better but the problem hasn’t gone away.
The association reported that in the last three years, there were 14 “orange days” —
or air quality days that meant it was not healthy for sen-sitive groups to be outside.
That is more than the associ-ation’s threshold of 10 days for that timeframe.
“So Cumberland County gets an F (for the 24-hour pe-riod),” he said.
The DEP has ambient air monitors that are placed throughout Region 3 to collect air quality data on a continu-ous basis. Van Orden said the data they collected shows that the region is meeting the EPA’s standard for PM2.5.
Cristina Fernandez, associ-ate director of the Office of Air Program Planning from the Air Protection Division at the EPA Region III, said the EPA has to review the request, but it looks as though the region meets the standard.
“The state submits a redes-ignation request that comes along with a maintenance plan that basically shows that they’re going to be maintain-ing the area, meeting the stan-dard for the next 10 years,” Fernandez said.
Once all of that is approved, then the classification be-comes “attainment,” she said.
The DEP compiles lists on-line of various pollutants and the major sources across the state, but it’s list for air pol-lution largely didn’t include warehouses since many do not have air quality operating per-mits.
“Warehouses by themselves don’t have sources of air pol-lution,” he said. “We don’t is-sue permits to trucks, so that’s why they’re not on the report-ing at all.”
What changed?This debate comes after ef-
forts in Pennsylvania to cut back on motor vehicle emis-sions — both in cars and trac-tor-trailers.
Five years ago, Pennsylvania put in place the Diesel-Pow-ered Motor Vehicle Idling Act. It prohibits the owners and drivers of any diesel-powered motor vehicle with a gross weight of 10,001 pounds or more to idle for more than five minutes in any continuous 60-minute period.
State Sen. Pat Vance was one
of the driving forces in get-ting the law passed. She said she knows it has brought more awareness to the issue, which is important to an area like the Midstate because of all of the truck traffic. However, the Sil-ver Spring Township Repub-lican said she is still hearing about big vehicles idling for a long period of time.
She said the biggest concern has been enforcement of the law because the police have other major crimes to inves-tigate and may not have the time or workforce to check on idling trucks and buses.
“Maybe we need to do a re-education, again,” Vance said. “I think we just need better enforcement.”
Thomas Au, president of the Clean Air Board of Central Pennsylvania which helped in lobbying for the law, said he thinks the anti-idling laws are a good start, but agrees that police need to work on en-forcement. Au said there was a group of students from Dick-inson College who visited rest areas along Interstate 81 to find out if truck drivers were observing the anti-idling laws at rest stops.
“They found widespread non-compliance,” Au said. “I think generally, the restric-tions are well known among the trucking community, and I would say a lot of truckers do observe the idling restric-tions. We have good compli-ance among school bus driv-ers and others. You still need someone to remind the drivers not to idle.”
What can be done?Stewart said he encourages
people to drive less, car pool, walk more and use less elec-tricity.
“We want everyone to be aware that even though it might look OK — you look outside and it’s not big, black puffy clouds of smoke — you also do know that air pollu-tion is problematic at levels where it’s not necessarily vis-ible to the eye,” Stewart said. “Individuals themselves need to make certain changes in terms of understanding what it is that makes air pollution in their own lives. We all share
the same air.”Au said there are still plenty
of improvements that can be done to make the air quality better in the Midstate. Some-thing as easy as planting trees along the highway could help reduce the amount of pollu-tion that gets into residential areas. He said those trees trap pollutants from trucks and cars.
“We think there is a big dif-ference between air pollution near highways and farther away from highways,” Au said. “We asked DEP to study that, and they did. We looked at the results, and our experts believe there was a statistically signif-icant difference in the pollu-tion levels, as opposed to the pollution levels at the official DEP monitor, which is located in Carlisle Springs, a good dis-tance from the highway.”
Fernandez said during the last 10 years, the region has had major improvements in air quality, with major reductions in fine particulate matter.
“For the 2012 annual stan-dard that we basically made more stringent — we went down from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 12 — the moni-tors in the area show that (Re-gion 3) is meeting that stan-dard,” she said. “So there is progress. Can there be more improvement? Absolutely. But there overall, over the years, there has been improvement in the air quality.”
As the organizations work to clean up the air that people breathe in the Midstate, the DEP says it hopes to contin-ue increasing the quality and to meet the EPA’s changing, more stringent standards.
“Ideally, we would love to get to a point where it’s just natural, background concen-tration,” Van Orden said. “But as long as there’s people liv-ing in an area, you probably will never get to that. At some point, there will be a plateau, then we’ll look again and see if we need to do anything else. There’s always some further review and planning we have to do as we go along.”
Email Samantha Madison at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @SentinelMadison
Continued from A1
Air
Warehouses
Measuring air pollutionBy Samantha Madison
The Sentinel
Determining the quality of air in the Mid-state includes measuring particles a fraction of the size of a human hair.
Particulate matter is a mix of microscopic solid and liquid droplets suspended in air, ac-cording to the state Department of Environ-mental Protection.
Those droplets can include acids, organic chemicals, metals, soil or dust particles. Fine particle pollution, referred to as PM2.5, is particulate matter that is less than or equal to 2.5 micrometers in diameter — about 1/30th the diameter of a human hair.
The Environmental Protection Agency said some sources of PM2.5 are certain industrial processes and types of combustion activi-ties — such as those in motor vehicles, power plants and wood burning.
The U.S. Geological Survey credits PM2.5 with causing a number of problems, includ-ing acid rain, regional haze and stream eu-trophication, which is the process by which a body of water acquires a high concentra-tion of nutrients, especially phosphates and nitrates. Because of the small size of these particles of pollution, it can penetrate deeply into people’s lungs.
The EPA’s Air Protection Division is in charge of keeping up with regulations. When the 2006-2008 report was released, the stan-dards for a 24-hour period required a region’s fine particulate matter to be at or below 35 micrograms per cubic meter. The annual re-quirement for fine particulate matter had to be at or below 15 micrograms per cubic meter.
In 2012, the requirement was switched for the annual measurement to 12 micrograms per cubic meter, but the EPA is still working on updating regional attainment following the new guidelines.
For the 24-hour period measurement, the data is collected for an entire day and then it’s analyzed, said Kevin Stewart, the director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic.
He said that number is then combined with the other 24-hour periods that are measured, which varies by region, and the average is reached that way. If the number is above 35 micrograms per cubic meter, that means the area did not meet the national standard.
The annual number is taken by looking at the average number for the entire year, which has to be below 15 micrograms per cubic me-ter to be considered in attainment by the EPA.
Dean Van Orden, the assistant director of the DEP’s Bureau of Air Quality, said since Pennsylvania adopted the same emissions regulations that California has, the PM2.5 readings have started to get better. He said the state has also adopted some emissions regulations for electric generators that has helped to clear up the air.
