Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services has announced plans to construct an office park on six parcels located at the entrance to CenterPoint Commerce & Trade Park West in Pittston Township. The company expects this “park within a park” to house approximately 750 jobs.
Mericle will develop six office buildings ranging from 14,400 square feet to 44,800 square feet. The buildings will total just over 150,000 square feet.
All of the buildings will be constructed on speculation.
According to Mericle Vice President of Marketing Jim Cummings, Mericle will break ground for the first building this spring. He said Mericle will construct the one story, 22,601 SF brick facility on a four-acre ReadyToGo!™ Site along Enterprise Way, immediately adjacent to Junior Achievement’s facility. Cummings said Mericle will break ground for the second building as soon as the first has been substantially occupied.
He said the office park project is a continuation of Mericle’s ReadyToGo!™ Program, which the company unveiled last August. Under the program, Mericle is developing more than 90 sites and dozens of industrial, office, and flex buildings on speculation in 10 area business parks. The six office parcels in CenterPoint West have already been prepared for buildings via the Ready to Go Program.
Cummings said a recent change in the type of inquiries Mericle is receiving led to the idea for the project. “We’ve finally seen an uptick in requests for office space,” he said. “Our area has been in a dry spell as far as office leads go. Hopefully, the momentum we are seeing will sustain itself.”
Cummings said inquiries from healthcare companies needing office space account for the majority of calls.
“Eight out of our last 12 office inquiries had some tie to healthcare or life sciences,” he said. “We have received calls from companies needing space for medical claims processing, surgery centers, dental clinics, healthcare administration and even physician recruiting.”
Other inquiries have come from financial services offices and law firms he said.
Cummings said CenterPoint West was selected for the mini office park because of its proximity to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.
“Many of our inquiries for office space have come from firms wishing to be equidistant to the populations of the region’s two largest cities,” he said. “Their preference is to open one location convenient to both cites rather than opening offices in both communities.”
Cummings added that Mericle’s plan to develop the six office buildings in CenterPoint West ties nicely into the NEPA Regional Biosciences Initiative. NEPA RBI was established in 2010 by regional leaders in education, business, economic development and government. Based upon the location of The Commonwealth Medical College (TCMC) within Northeastern Pennsylvania, an eight-county economic development strategic plan was completed by AngelouEconomics.
The Goal of the NEPA RBI is to increase life science career and business opportunities within Northeastern Pennsylvania. Regional Strategies will build upon the region’s knowledge-based partnerships and investments.
“We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve already been able to locate seven companies with life sciences or healthcare ties to CenterPoint,” said Cummings. “However, they’ve all located in our flex or industrial buildings. Our new office buildings will broaden our ability to recruit different types of companies, including healthcare companies, to CenterPoint.”
The companies with healthcare or life sciences ties in CenterPoint are Benco Dental, Corning Life Sciences, KCI, Cintas First Aid and Safety, Geisinger Blood Center, Patterson Dental, and C3i.
Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services, founded by Rob Mericle, is a vertically-integrated company with more than 200 in-house professionals with expertise in all aspects of commercial real estate development and construction. The Mericle team includes licensed architects, land planners, professional engineers, surveyors, licensed electricians, plumbers, carpenters, certified public accountants, in-house legal counsel, leasing and marketing professionals, licensed brokers, property managers, and more.