Mayfield to open bids on $15M mine reclamation project for industrial park

Yahoo

13-05-2025

A nearly $15 million mine reclamation project is on track to start this summer in Mayfield and Archbald, paving the way for a $110-million-plus warehousing park above the Casey Highway.
Mayfield Borough Council will open bids during its meeting Wednesday to select a contractor to carry out a large, grant-funded project that will reclaim 87 acres of mine-scarred land just off Exit 5 of the Casey Highway at the end of Rushbrook Street. Once that land is usable, Reading-based Century Development Associates will construct two warehouses — a 745,200-square-foot warehouse in Mayfield and a 646,380-square-foot warehouse in Archbald — totaling 1.4 million square feet of warehousing space for its planned Century Logistics Center, which is projected to create hundreds of jobs.
Mayfield council President Diana Campbell expects to have the borough's engineer and solicitor review the bids in hopes of beginning work in June or July after council awards the contract. Mayfield, which operates on a $1.2 million annual budget, has never had a development as large as the $110-million plus warehousing project, she said.
'The process is a lot more involved than we ever could have imagined,' Campbell said. 'It's been a learning process for all of us, and we're coming out strong.'
In Archbald, borough officials anticipate extending the conditional approval the town granted for its portion of the project a year and a half ago. Borough Manager Dan Markey said council granted conditional use approval for the logistics park in December 2023, which expires after 18 months, requiring Century Development Associates to seek an extension if they do not have all of their permitting in place by June, Markey said. The project still needs permitting at the local and state level, including land development, zoning, stormwater and highway occupancy permitting, he said.
To fund the mine reclamation, the state Department of Environmental Protection awarded Mayfield $14.97 million through its Abandoned Mine Lands and Acid Mine Drainage Grant Program.
According to a public notice published May 2 in The Times-Tribune that advertised the available contract, work will entail installation of temporary erosion and sedimentation controls; drilling/blasting and earthmoving of 815,000 cubic yards of material; drilling/blasting and over-excavation, including structural backfill of 820,000 cubic yards for deep mine remediation; and final grading and site stabilization.
According to a DEP grant summary for the project, there were two coal seams that were historically deep mined on the site: the Top Clark and Clark beds, with a 16-acre area covering a portion of the Clark mine that is considered a potential subsidence zone. In addition to reclaiming the mines, other work includes removing spoil piles (mine waste), backfilling pits and excavating high walls, according to the DEP.
The contractor will have 365 days to complete work, said Ron Ryczak, Mayfield's grant administrator and a former borough councilman. Ryczak, who spent 32 years working at the DEP's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation, said the most significant portion of the project will be 'daylighting' the uppermost coal vein. Core drilling found that the first underlying coal vein had been mined so much that it would not be conducive to building on top of, requiring crews to 'daylight' it, or blast all the way down to the original floor — about 50 feet down — and remove all of the material.
'All the material that gets blasted gets moved all the way down to what's considered the floor of that vein, and then at that point, they start bringing the material back up as engineered fill,' he said.
The engineered fill would be compacted and used as an underlying sub-base for the future warehouses.
Other remnants of coal mines include pits from strip mining and spoil piles, he said.
The borough hired Kaufman Engineering, Ryczak said, explaining the firm did the work necessary to calculate the figures included in the contract.
As work is underway, Kaufman will track the material being moved and the blasting using a drone, he said.
Mark Powell, the owner of Century Development Associates, said his project wouldn't have been possible without the nearly $15 million in grant funding. He estimates the total project will cost between $110 million and $120 million.
He anticipates starting construction on the first of his two warehouses next spring. Which warehouse he builds first depends on who will occupy the buildings, though Powell said he believes the Archbald one will probably be first because the mine reclamation work on the Archbald side will be done sooner.
'We're going to go all at it,' he said. 'We're going to put the foot on the pedal and go.'
The warehouses will take 10 to 15 months to build, depending on who the user will be, Powell said.
He projects it will create 500 to 700 jobs across the two buildings, though it depends on who occupies them. Powell estimated the jobs will pay $20 to $24 an hour with benefits.
Both Campbell and Markey noted the impact the logistics park will have on their communities.
The location is ideal because it's above the Casey Highway, so it won't bring truck traffic into residential areas, Markey said. The new jobs will support businesses in not just Archbald and Mayfield but other nearby towns like Jermyn, he said.
'The benefits are really widespread,' Markey said. 'They're not just going to benefit Archbald. They're not just going to benefit Mayfield. They're going to benefit the entire area.'
Although the site has a 10-year Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance designation, or LERTA, that reduces how much it will pay on property taxes for the first decade, Campbell pointed to the annually increasing tax revenue from the development, with the landowner paying more each year under the LERTA.
LERTAs are often applied to large warehousing projects like this, with officials touting them as key for being competitive and attracting developers.
'It's helping the developer, but it's … going to allow us to see a little more every single year than we ever had before,' Campbell said.
Roads will be the borough's top priority with the new tax revenue, in addition to parks and recreation with playground improvements and additional support for the borough's police, fire and emergency medical services, she said.
'It's going to help release the burden off of our residents a little bit,' Campbell said. 'We want to make our community as great of a place to live as possible.'