A new logistics facility is expected to bring about 700 warehousing jobs to Monroe County.
Johnson & Johnson Sales and Logistics Co. LLC, entered a long-term lease to bring the jobs to the Arcadia North Business Park in Coolbaugh Township, Gov. Ed Rendell said Tuesday.
The company, based in Skillman, N.J., is a division of Johnson & Johnson, the health care products manufacturing giant that is based in New Brunswick, N.J., and employs about 122,000 people.
The structure, currently under construction, is a 1.38-million-square-foot facility near Mount Pocono Municipal Airport, said Chuck Leonard, executive director of the Pocono Mountains Economic Development Corp.
The governor announced the project would create 268 jobs and retain 434 existing jobs in Pennsylvania.
But Iris Grossman, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson Sales and Logistics, said the “retained” jobs will come from a distribution facility the company operates in the Mechanicsburg area, near Harrisburg.
“We're going to be vacating that by 2008,” Ms. Grossman said.
The new facility will be the latest in a burst of growth for Northeastern Pennsylvania's trucking, warehousing and distribution industry in recent years, thanks in part to the region's relatively cheap supply of land and labor, and its confluence of rail lines and four major highways that can send goods to all of the Northeast U.S. with ease.
The number of transportation and warehousing jobs in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties grew to 11,417 as of June, up from 8,781 that time in 2003, according to the state Department of Labor and Industry. Monroe County had 2,881 such jobs as of June, up from 2,002 in 2001.
Many other planned or recently opened logistics centers in Northeastern Pennsylvania will add thousands more jobs to those totals.
Johnson & Johnson will contract with a logistics company to staff and operate its local facility, Ms. Grossman said. The workers will process J&J's consumer and personal care products, she said, and the operation is expected to open between September and December.
Incentives for the project include an $800,000 state grant and $804,000 in job creation tax credits, according to the state Department of Community and Economic Development.
The warehouse will be the first development in the park, which received $9.7 million from the state in 2005, according to DCED.
Mr. Leonard said the news is a positive development for the Poconos region.
“It's a quality company that's growing and well-known,” he said. “We're pretty enthusiastic about it.”
Contact the writer: jhaggerty@timesshamrock.com
