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Tyco Redevelopment Project

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Project Status: Land Development

TYCO Redevelopment Project: PENDING

Funding: REC was approved for a $1.1 million grant and a loan totaling more than $1.7 million for the project from the Commonwealth Financing Authority through its Business in Our Sites program. The state funding assists with acquisition, site work, demolition, and stormwater management improvements.

In March 2019, demolition work began at the site of the former 55,000 square-foot Tyco Electronics plant, a vacant industrial property located in Carlisle Borough’s northwest quadrant. Tyco closed in 2009 at around the same time as two other nearby manufacturing businesses – the IAC/Masland property and Carlisle Tire & Wheel. With their closing, Carlisle saw significant job loss and a major gap in the local economy.

In response, the Carlisle Urban Redevelopment Plan was unveiled in 2013 with the hope of redeveloping this cluster of vacant and contaminated properties totaling 65 acres. These brownfield sites posed major challenges to redevelopment because they carried significant upfront costs related to demolition, stormwater management, infrastructure, and site prep.

The Real Estate Collaborative (REC), LLC, a subsidiary of CAEDC, was created to tackle just these kinds of projects – ones that “REC can reposition ton bring both economic development and community value”, stated Jamie Keener, CAEDC Director of Economic Development.

REC purchased the Tyco property in 2018 with the mission of taking this former large contributor to the local economy and creating a new positive asset for the community. Keener notes that “REC has a different expectation when it comes to return on investment than private developers and one of our biggest assets is our ability to access grant and low interest loan funding. The Business in Our Sites program and the Industrial Site Reuse Program (ISRP) provided funding to help us acquire the property, demolish it, obtain ACT2 environmental clearance through PADEP, and to support some of the site work for the project.”

With its demolition, the Tyco site becomes the last of these three brownfield sites to begin the redevelopment process as envisioned in the 2013 Carlisle Urban Redevelopment Plan.  “It’s great that progress is happening as a result of the Carlisle Borough revitalization plan. We saw a major loss in a short period of time – now we are seeing redevelopment occur on these three properties, and the surrounding road and utility infrastructure,” says Keener.

Demolition is complete and REC has recently signed an Agreement of Sale with a developer for both the TYCO and Kuhn parcels. As the developer is currently performing its due diligence, the project will be announced at a later date.

Prior to REC’s acquisition of the site, it went through initial DEP Act 2 environmental clearance up to a non-residential standard. REC recently obtained Act 2 clearance that up to and including residential standard. “As a result of COVID and the likelihood that the Commercial Office real estate market will be slow to return, REC has reconsidered the potential use and there is a desire by a developer to put housing on the properties. There is a significant need in the Carlisle community for workforce housing and this project would support that need”, states Keener.

REC received support on this project from a number of partners including Carlisle Borough, North Middleton Township, Senator Mike Regan, Representative Barbara Gleim, and the Cumberland County Commissioners, as well as the PA Commonwealth Financing Authority and the PA Department of Community and Economic Development.  Ongoing collaboration with the Cumberland County Planning Commission, the Cumberland County Housing and Redevelopment Authority, Carlisle Borough and North Middleton Township has been occurring since the summer of 2021 and an announcement about the project is anticipated in early 2022.

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