OPINION: Is Pennsylvania EDA experience a forerunner of our own?

Opening my Sunday issue of the Washington Post over my morning coffee March 5, I bolted upright from my cushions as I read a business section, eight-column headline article on how, in 2013 a major corporation promised to open a high tech factory in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, hire 500 workers, and invest $30 million.

The locals were giddy, wrote reporter Todd C. Frankel, the state governor and local politicians trumpeted the news, and even the Pennsylvania Economic Development Agency (EDA) was touting the deal with Foxconn* as late as December.  President Donald Trump even multiplied the number of jobs from 500 to 50,000 after his election.  The factory, to produce Apple IPhones, was never built, apparently never will be, though Foxconn maintains an old brick warehouse accommodating about 50 workers in Harrisburg, according to the Post.

Road to where at Royal Phoenix Business Park at the former Avtex Superfund site in Front Royal? File Photos/Royal Examiner

Our local Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority, questioned for several months without substantive reply about its deal with ITFederal, immediately came to mind as I read the lengthy and comprehensive report.  ITFederal’s similarly-ballyhooed plan appears to be evaporating at the same speed as our congressional representative Bob Goodlatte, who helped snip the ribbon at the ITFederal site in Front Royal in October 2015.  Goodlatte has also declined comment on the project he has been credited by our EDA executive director for bringing here as an “economic development opportunity” that would allegedly produce 400 to 600 jobs on the back of a publicized $40-million investment.

It struck me as odd that President Trump was not yet trumpeting ITFederal’s project, if there really is one. After all, we are only 70 miles west of his new home!

The Post article made me worry if we will end up like the disappointed EDA and people of Harrisburg, PA.  I say that because our EDA recently announced not only a one-year extension of deadlines for the ITFederal project, but also a reduction in its scope, at least of Phase One of the promised multi-layered project.  But we are told not to lose faith. After all, a few truckloads of dirt have been moved to the site.

Will fill dirt or smoke and mirrors be the dominant foundation for the first Avtex/Royal Phoenix commercial redevelopment client?

The Post article suggests that corporations across the country – the newspaper identified IBM, Intel, Softfbank and Aliba – “have made an unusual display of loudly announcing their intentions to invest in the United States … much to Trump’s delight.”  For the record, President Obama did the same in 2012 when he visited the announced $5 billion site of a new computer chip plant in Arizona – but that facility was never completed either.

Meanwhile, the co-owner of a Harrisburg construction firm reportedly tried to “chase down information” about the planned $30-million Foxconn factory.

“It felt like I was grabbing Jell-O; it never got any traction,” he is quoted as saying.  Sort of like my colleague Roger Bianchini or Town Councilwoman Bébhinn Egger trying to chase down detail or assurances about ITFederal at Royal Phoenix in Front Royal.

Should we worry that our EDA and its Executive Director Jennifer McDonald are being taken down a similar road as the Harrisburg people?  It looks like these fairy tale projects are far more widespread than I thought.  The Pennsylvania experience mirrors our own in so many ways that I am suspicious that ITFederal’s plan for Front Royal may never come to fruition.

I guess as the ever-wise “they” say, time will tell.

* Footnote: Foxconn reportedly has more than 1 million employees, mostly in China.