New plans for warehouse in Benner Township are in the works but with a big change
Plans for the controversial Benner Warehouse are again in the works, but this time with a sizable change.
A formal land development plan has not yet been submitted to the county or to Benner Township, but a preliminary plan for a fulfillment center warehouse in the Benner Commerce Park has been, Chris Schnure, Centre County’s subdivision and land development planner, said during Tuesday’s Centre County Commissioners meeting. The sketch plan shows the warehouse is proposed to be about 123,000 to 130,000 square feet — just a sliver of the once proposed one million-square-foot warehouse.
The warehouse is proposed for a single 46 acre lot in the Benner Commerce Park, Schnure said, with access to it at Industrial Drive. The original plans submitted in 2022 showed three lots would be consolidated into a 103 acre parcel. Schnure said the applicant is now proposing a “reduced building footprint.”
SunCap Property Group is still the developer of the project, and continues to refuse to reveal who the end user of the warehouse would be. Brian Dunn, a development associate at SunCap, said they have a pre-application meeting next month and want to submit the formal land development plan as soon as they can.
“We are working tirelessly to better define the building footprint as well as the parking associated with the building. And again, we anticipate a submittal as soon as we can. And then from there, we’ll be moving through the municipal process. But again, very excited to be back in front of you all today to be talking about this project,” Dunn said.
Matt Virgin, executive vice president at SunCap, said they “can’t really speculate as to why it’s being downsized.” When the development plan is submitted, he said the number of employees expected to work at the warehouse will be included. The 2022 plans anticipated the warehouse would bring about 700 jobs to Centre County.
Since the warehouse was first proposed almost two years ago, the fulfillment center has been surrounded by mystery and controversy. The developer of the project has cited nondisclosure agreements for the reason the end user has not been shared publicly. Virgin again declined to disclose Tuesday who the end user of the warehouse would be.
“This will be a traditional distribution warehouse use with a lot of different types of products inside,” Virgin said.
Commissioner Mark Higgins said growth in Centre County continues, and speculated that Amazon would be the end user of the warehouse.
“We continue to have growth in Centre County and perhaps I’m assuming Amazon isn’t making any particular comment about the business climate here. I’m sure that sales online perhaps have slowed a little bit. And at least in the short term, they don’t need a million square feet; 123 to 130 (thousand) might meet their needs in the short term. Obviously, just speculation,” Higgins said.
Amazon did not respond to an inquiry from the Centre Daily Times in January asking if the Benner warehouse was an Amazon project. That same month, a FedEx spokesperson said it was not a FedEx project.
The commissioners approved placing a memorandum of understanding for the warehouse plan on the consent agenda of next week’s meeting. The MOU is between the developer, the township and the county and states the developer agrees to pay for the municipality’s engineers reviewing time, Schnure said. The commissioners don’t approve the plan itself, that would be up to the Centre County Planning Commission, he said.
Plans were submitted in April 2022, withdrawn that same month, and a nearly identical plan was resubmitted about four months later. Those plans were again withdrawn in February. The first two times the plan was submitted it showed a 1,080,289-square-foot fulfillment center at the end of Penntech Drive in the Benner Commerce Park.
