At the peak of U.S. Steel’s operations at their massive Falls Township site in the 1970s, they employed 5,000 people who worked in shifts around the clock. Within the next few years, the Keystone Trade Center at the same site could host as many as 10,000 jobs.

On Thursday afternoon, local elected officials, union leaders, and staff from NorthPoint Development, which owns and is building out the site, held a ceremonial groundbreaking at the property in Falls Township.

While construction has been underway for months, the ceremony marked the change from earthmoving to putting up walls of planned massive warehouses at the 1,800-acre property.

NorthPoint Development officials have said the project has the potential to add 5,000 to 10,000 jobs and 15 million square feet of new warehouse space with a total investment of $1.5 billion over the coming years. The company said they want to develop the “largest e-commerce, logistics, and multi-model industrial project on the East Coast” with room for as many as 20 new buildings.

Thousands of temporary construction jobs will be created as the project moves forward over the coming years.

Jeremy Michael, NorthPoint’s director of development, explained his company will own the warehouses and will lease them out. He confirmed there are signed tenants for some of the first few buildings, but he was unable to announce them at this time.

Some of the companies NorthPoint has worked with at other sites have been Home Depot, Staples, Walmart, Amazon, FedEx, XPO Logistics, Chewy.com, General Motors, and Ulta.

Michael said the project is the largest of its kind on the East Coast.

Jeff Dence, the chairperson of the Falls Township Board of Supervisors, said there had been plans in the past for the site that didn’t quiet pan out, so he was “skeptical” when NorthPoint brought their proposal forward.

The supervisors chairperson said he is a transplant from Philadelphia who has lived in Bucks County for more than two decades, but he always heard people talk about the impact old “the mill” had on the area.

Dence said he is pleased such a “transformative” project is taking place at the site and moving forward.

“We would have starts and stops. Jobs would be promised to come in and they would stop,” State Rep. John Galloway, a Democrat from Falls Township, said of past projects.

He heralded the NorthPoint project as a “economic driver” for the region. The lawmaker compared the new development to the impacts the steel mill once had.

Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie, a Democrat from Falls Township, noted the site has helped provide jobs to locals for generations. Before its current and past use as U.S. Steel’s mill, the site was a large farm.

Harvie said it was key to have a willing partner, referring to NorthPoint Development, to remake the massive site that sits along the Delaware River.

“It’s an amazing transformation we’re starting to see,” said State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, a Democrat from Lower Makefield Township.

Santarsiero said the Keystone Trade Center will support many local, good-paying jobs that will support families throughout Lower Bucks County.

Tullytown Borough Mayor David Cutchineal, who once worked at the steel mill, said he looks forward to all the new jobs and hopes the development can help bring people and businesses to his nearby borough, which once hummed due to the activity from the steel mill.

The first building construction is starting on is a 1,159,849 square-foot warehouse.

U.S. Steel, which operates a roughly 100-person finishing operation, and a handful of other companies will continue to own and lease sites within the property and maintain their operations, but NorthPoint Development is looking to improve the entire site with infrastructure upgrades.

The project is receiving tax breaks to help spur along development.

Santarsiero was key in getting state approval to mark the property as a Keystone Opportunity Investment Zone.

All three taxing bodies for the property – the Bucks County Commissioners, Falls Township, and the Pennsbury School District – agreed in 2020 to allow the site to become a Keystone Opportunity Investment Zone from January 1, 2020 and ending on December 31, 2035. The designation will give the developer tax breaks to encourage growth.

The property had previously been designated a Keystone Opportunity Investment Zone from the early 2000s until a few years ago. However, development plans by U.S. Steel didn’t fully pan out during those years.

The site is home to significant pollution from its previous uses.

NorthPoint Development is in the process of investing $25 million over the next few years to complete cleanup of contamination at the property, Jed Momot, the chief strategy officer for NorthPoint Development, said in 2020.

The site first opened in 1952 as the U.S. Steel Fairless Works complex. It was the site of a large steel mill, a coke (fuel used in the steel making process) production plant, steel making and forging operations, a powerhouse, and chemical plant. By the 1970s, more than 5,000 people worked at the site. As the years wore on, U.S. Steel slashed thousands of positions and in 2001 closed the majority of the site. The company still finishes cold-rolled steel products made at western Pennsylvania plants for use in the automotive, home construction, appliance, and metal building industries at the facility. By 2009, about 100 U.S. Steel employees worked at the facility as the company continued demolishing buildings that were unused.

The opening of the U.S. Steel Fairless Works complex was a massive benefit for the Fairless Hills and Levittown developments.

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