Business View Magazine - October 2018

178 179 L ackawanna, New York still carries the moniker “Steel City” from its days as the center of steel manu- facturing for most of the 20th cen- tury. In 1922, the Lackawanna Steel Com- pany was acquired by the Bethlehem Steel Company; at its peak the plant employed 20,000 people, attracting immigrants from around the world to settle in the area.When business de- clined, trigger- ing massive job layoffs followed by the closing of the plant in 1983, the local economy was all but destroyed. In the 21st century, ef- forts have been made to develop the 1,000-acre ‘”Bethlehem brownfields” to other uses. The site has a diversity of ten- ants - some occupying buildings remaining from the former steel plant and others in newer buildings. As Erie County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, reports, “The County has been going through an economic renais- sance for a number of years, starting with the City of Buffalo which is the County seat. The City of Lackawanna is immediate- ly adjacent to Buffalo on the south side. I grew up in Lackawanna and my father was a steelworker at the Bethlehem Steel site. We’ve been seeing this tremen- dous rebirth with Erie County and Buffalo, but not every com- munity has bene- fited from it.” To further economic growth, the Erie County Industri- al Development Agency (ECIDA) recently acquired 150 acres of the Beth- lehem Steel property from primary owner, Tecumseh, a divi- sion of Arcelor-Mittal Steel. Ninety-three acres are shovel-ready. The County, the Industrial Land Development Corporation, and the City of Lackawanna are working in tandem to promote, market, and develop the site. Maria Whyte, Deputy County Exec- utive, shares, “The Bethlehem Steel site is STEELED FOR A BRIGHT NEW FUTURE LACKAWANNA, NEW YORK