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Kathy Henderson has been Director of Economic Development for Carbon Chamber and Economic Development Corp. (CCEDC) since 2014. In that time, she has counseled numerous business start-ups and new entrepreneurs, helped existing businesses to grow in the county, recruited a large medical waste processing company to the CCEDC warehouse, earned Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority (PIDA) certification for the CCEDC and resuscitated the Business and Education Partnership, which also organizes and runs the CCEDC's annual Hippie Run. This event raises money for scholarships for graduating seniors from each of the County's 6 school districts.

Her work responsibilities include property management of the CCEDC's warehouse and office building. She also underwrites loan packages for the CCEDC's Small Business Expansion Loan Fund and the Carbon County Industrial Development Authority's Revolving Loan Fund.

In 2018 she helped to facilitate Carbon County's completion of the Return on Environment Study along with Audubon Pennsylvania, and John Rogers of Keystone Conservation Trust.

Mrs. Henderson is a member of numerous Boards, including the Northeast PA Alliance (NEPA), Commuter Services, CTC Manufacturing, Carbon/Schuylkill/Luzerne STEM Ecosystem, Lehighton Main Street Steering Committee and the Lehigh Canal and Recreation Commission (LCRC).  

She is the vice-chair of the NEPA MPO Policy Committee, a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber's Public Policy Committee and the Pennsylvania Economic Development Association (PEDA) Advocacy Committee and Convention and Professional Standards Committee.  

In her past life, she was a licensed Realtor in both Florida and Pennsylvania. What spare time she has she devotes to acting as the Committee Chair for her church's Boy Scout Troop and is a member of the church's audit committee. She enjoys bicycling, camping, fishing, hiking and gardening.

Late this spring, PEDA released the initial results of its EDC Impact Study. The study, as discussed at the time, was aimed at documenting both the effort required by our EDC community to successfully compete on a global scale and the impact that results from their efforts to serve as the cornerstone for social and business networks that propel the local economy.

Since that time, PEDA's work with Fourth Economy Consulting and Econsult Solutions, Inc., has continued, as a full report has been developed to provide a broader understanding of the underlying processes through which the data was collected, the impacts were estimated, etc. We welcome you to review the full report (or the Executive Summary) and encourage you to share this information with legislators and key stakeholders in your communities.

Lew Villotti is the President of the Beaver County Corporation for Economic Development (BCCED), the lead economic development organization for Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

Born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania Lew began his professional career working for the Washington County Planning Commission in Washington, PA, were he spent nearly nine years, the last two as the Assistant Director. Lew is a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor's in Urban Affairs and a Masters in Geography and Regional Planning and, prior to joining BCCED, served as the Planning and Development Director for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC) and Vice President of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Corporation. Lew also held previous positions of Transportation Program Manager at SPC and was a Project Manager for Michael Baker Corporation.

Lew has also served as a peer consultant for the Federal Highway Administration's scenario, planning initiatives in Birmingham, Alabama; Newark, New Jersey; and Richmond, Virginia. Lew lives in Avella, Pennsylvania with his wife Beth and daughter Maria, where he is an active member of the community and has served on the board of the Independence Cross Creek Joint Sewer Authority and coached soccer for 12 years.

IMPACT Across PA | Beaver County

On July 3rd, Governor Tom Wolf announced a low-interest loan approval through the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority (PIDA) for Beemac Trucking, LLC in Beaver County. The funding will enable the construction of a new full-service maintenance and repair facility in Ambridge Borough and will support the combined creation and retention of more than 200 full-time jobs.

Beemac Trucking, LLC provides asset-based trucking, logistics, port, warehousing, and specialized services to customers throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The company was approved for a $1,573,087, 15-year loan at a 3 percent rate through the Beaver County Corporation for Economic Development. The funding will be used for construction of an eight-bay state-of-the-art maintenance facility and a service shop with a 110-space paved truck and trailer marshaling area.

The total project cost is $3,146,173. The project will enable the company to create 24 full-time jobs while retaining 190 full-time jobs within three years.

This content is shared courtesy of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). 

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Stephen is President and CEO of the Altoona Blair County Development Corporation. Stephen brings more than 25 years of management and economic development experience in both the public and private sector. Throughout his career he has worked to identify organizational and community place-based assets, matching them with new market opportunities.

Stephen first worked at the ABCD Corporation from 2000 to 2007 serving as Director of Corporate Services. He was a member of the Southern Alleghenies Tourism Committee, the Workforce Investment Board and managed the development and marketing of the I-99 Innovation Corridor Initiative.

In 2010 he was a co-founder of the economic development firm Fourth Economy Consulting where he worked with communities and industry across the country building competitive operational growth strategies and industrial site selection. A native of Blair County, Stephen can be found on a ski slope in the winter and on the roads and trails all seasons in between. 

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IMPACT Across PA | Montgomery County

Photo Credit: David Zellers

Adaptive reuse of former industrial sites is often the key to meaningful economic development in many, if not most, municipalities in Pennsylvania. In Ambler, the redevelopment of the Ambler Boiler House is an excellent example of what thoughtful economic development can do to bring back to life a property that was thought completely unusable. The Keasbey & Mattison Company, once the world's largest manufacturer of asbestos, built the 48,000 square-foot Boiler House in 1897 as a power generating station to run their entire plant in Ambler. Following the collapse of the asbestos industry, the site became a community eyesore and an environmental wasteland.

Through a public-private effort coordinated by the Redevelopment Authority of Montgomery County (MCRDA), a part of the Montgomery County Commerce Department, an unprecedented approach using PA's Act 3 rulemaking was undertaken in which the MCRDA temporarily held property title in the form of a straw party agreement during the cleanup. Public sector support for the project included EPA loan funding ($1.47 million total), a $4 million RACP grant, a $1.25 BIOS loan and a $900,000 BIOS grant, a $3.5 million HUD 108 Loan, and a $1.2 ISRP grant. The total costs of the site clean-up and redevelopment were approximately $16 million. At the time of purchase of the property, preliminary site investigation work revealed Asbestos Containing Material (ACM) both in the pitched roof and throughout the facility due to improper prior demolition. The general scope of work entailed the removal of asbestos contaminated piping and debris throughout the first and second level of the building, the bulk disposal of mixed ACM and contaminated demolition debris, the removal and off-site disposal of the ACM pitched roof sections located throughout the building, ACM dust abatement, and material removal and disposal. Given the extent of the contamination, approximately $4.6 million in environmental work had to take place prior to any other renovation. This prohibitive cost had deterred interested parties for decades.

During construction, the project was able to save much of the existing shell. In order to accomplish this, sections were scrubbed clean of ACM by certified professionals wearing personal protective equipment. The ACM was properly disposed of. To a large degree, the majority of the building's original structural steel was repaired and remained, which prevented materials going to a landfill. The building was preserved through an adaptive reuse strategy. Recycled and/or salvaged materials of high post-consumer content and low VOC interior finishes were specifically used. Roofing materials were selected based on their albedo (or reflection coefficient) in order to reduce the solar gain effect on the building. The project received 85 out of 110 possible credits, earning a Platinum level certification from LEED. Ultimately, this successful redevelopment resulted in the delivery of 42,000 sf of unique Platinum level LEED certified Class A office space to one of Montgomery County's core communities and has spurred additional redevelopment of the area around Ambler's SEPTA station and downtown.