The company that makes the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser for Procter & Gamble is helping to erase some of the blight along the former Bethlehem Steel complex in Lackawanna.
Time Release Sciences, more commonly known as TMP Technologies, is getting nearly $5 million in tax breaks and other incentives to help it build a factory in part of the largely vacant steel complex along Route 5, in part of a new industrial park created by the Erie County Industrial Development Agency.
"It's such an exciting project," said John Cappellino, the agency's executive vice president. "It marks the first investment in the new industrial park."
IDA officials created the park with land acquired by an affiliate and from the company that owns most of the complex, Tecumseh Redevelopment.
The $22.7 million project will build a 290,000-square-foot factory on a site located just off the Dona Street extension now under construction and across from the Welded Tube factory, which opened in 2013 and now employs about 100 people producing piping for the energy industry. The TMP factory is expected to bring with it 103 existing jobs, with a promise to create 50 more positions, paying an average of about $40,000 a year, over the next five years, IDA officials said.
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"This is just the start," said County Executive Mark Poloncarz, who has spearheaded efforts to revitalize an industrial site that has been largely vacant since Bethlehem Steel shut down 35 years ago.
"It's always toughest to get the first. There's much more than will happen with this site in the long run," he said. "People often said this project was too big to take on and that no one would want to go there."
The project will more than double the space used by TMP, which has a 120,000-square-foot facility at 205 Dingens St. that it has outgrown and can't be expanded.
That put TMP in a bind, especially since its main customer has long wanted it to move closer to its distribution facilities as a way of reducing shipping costs.
"We always said no, that would be way too much. We have a nice operation here. It's too disruptive and the cost of the move would not make sense," said Robert Laughlin, TMP's president.
But with TMP looking to move anyway, the pressure resumed.
"We went back and thought, what can we do here?" Laughlin said. "We've got to make an appealing case for this, and one thing that Buffalo has, we thought, was a lot of abandoned warehouse, abandoned manufacturing and closed manufacturing sites, so we said OK."
To make the deal work, the IDA awarded the company a tax break package worth nearly $4.2 million. The company also is getting $750,000 in workforce development funds through the agency that will be treated much like as a forgivable loan, as long as the firm meets its job promises over the next 10 years.
In all, the county controls about 240 acres within the former steel plant complex, giving it a supply of land that is ready to be developed that can be easily divided into large chunks, spanning as much as 40 acres to 50 acres if a business was seeking such a large site, at a time when shovel-ready parcels are in relatively short supply locally.
Poloncarz and other local leaders are betting that more than $12 million investment to acquire the site and prepare it for development will create a coveted site for manufacturers and other business. That's because the property has easy access to transportation by water, railroad and highway. The highly visible land also is close to Canada and qualifies for lucrative brownfield tax credits.
TMP hopes to start construction in mid-September and have the facility completed by mid-September of next year.
TMP was founded in 1954 and makes an array of cleaning products. Laughlin and a business partner, Kirk Dorn, acquired the business a few years ago.
