SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION: SHOVEL-READY SITES

panish wind energy giant Gamesa Corp. recognizes a good deal when it sees one.

   By selecting U.S. Steel’s former Fairless Hills industrial site in Falls Township, Pa., as the location of a planned $34-million manufacturing operation, Gamesa will save itself millions of dollars in tax payments over the next 13 years.

   The windmill maker announced March 7 that it would locate three modern manufacturing centers on 20-plus acres (8.1 hectares) in what Pennsylvania calls a Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone.

   The KOIZ initiative is one of the most successful “shovel-ready” site programs in the country, annually attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in new corporate capital investment to Pennsylvania industrial sites that otherwise would lie dormant.

   Gamesa, the second largest wind energy company in the world headquartered in Victoria, Spain, previously had invested $50 million in Pennsylvania, including its North American headquarters in Philadelphia and another manufacturing plant in Ebensburg in Cambria County.

   The three new plants in Bucks County will create more than 300 jobs in the production of windmill blades and towers and the assembly of nacelles, which house the wind turbines. Those jobs will be added to the 264 jobs created by Gamesa at the other two locations in the Keystone State.

   The state Department of Community and Economic Development, along with the Bucks County Economic Development Corp., offered Gamesa a package totaling $10 million in grants, loans and tax credits for the three manufacturing centers at the U.S. Steel site.

   The most important benefit to Gamesa, however, came in the form of the shovel-ready site inside the KOIZ, which encourages brownfield redevelopment by offering businesses tax-free status through 2018.

   Gamesa’s blade manufacturing plant at Fairless Hills will produce parts for the Gamesa G8X-2.0 MW multi-megawatt wind turbines. The $12-million plant, which will have an annual production capacity of 300 megawatts, will begin production in the middle of the year.

   The tower manufacturing plant will represent a capital investment of $7 million, while the plant responsible for nacelle assembly will cost $15 million to build and equip.

   “It is an ambitious industrial plan that will reinforce our long-term commitment to the wind energy market of the United States, which is one of the priority markets for Gamesa,” said company President Alfonso Basagoiti, who noted that Gamesa had signed contracts for more than 669 megawatts of wind production during 2004 and 2005.

   Rick Leighton, vice president of corporate services for NAI Global in Pottstown, Pa., served as the exclusive broker for U.S. Steel in the $6-million real estate transaction.

   “The KOIZ is very significant for two reasons,” said Leighton. “As Gamesa was looking around for a site, the KOIZ designation gave us an immediate opportunity to get them interested in this site. The state economic development people are helping to market this site and are funneling people to it. Secondly, it is a completely tax-free environment through 2018. That’s no property taxes, no corporate business taxes.”

   Another benefit, Leighton noted, is that the KOIZ program turns abandoned industrial sites into viable properties. “This was a very heavy industrial site that had been labeled an environmental holocaust,” he said. “U.S. Steel, the state and the regional EPA have worked through all of the environmental cleanup issues and have identified the good acres and buildings that are available for new industrial use.”

   U.S. Steel originally secured the KOIZ status for some 1,250 acres (506 hectares) at the site in January 2005. “That is the highest incentive available in Pennsylvania,” said Leighton. “The state has recognized that this site has value, and it puts this site on the short list for people who do site selection for companies.”

   Gamesa joins Toll Brothers, which in late 2004 established a roofing component factory in the zone, employing 140 workers.