U.S. Steel Seeking To Sell Fairless Works Site

A massive area of land in Falls Township – among the largest industrial areas in the Philadelphia region – is being shopped around by U.S. Steel.

The Philadelphia Inquirer broke the news Tuesday that U.S. Steel is privately courting potential buyers who may be interested in the slightly more than 1,700 acres of property that formerly was known as the Fairless Works site. The newspaper reported that they learned of the moves through regional developers who have been approached to bid.

A request for comment to a U.S. Steel spokesperson was not immediately returned.

Falls Township Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff Dence told LevittownNow.com he knew there was talk of the property being put up for sale, but he was not aware of any current moves that have been made.

The large property could be used for industry, heavy manufacturing, and warehouses. It features easy access to CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines, the international port, and major highways, including I-95, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpike, and Route 1. The property also sits in a key area close to Philadelphia and New York.

Real estate broker Frank Roddy, who works in Bucks County, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the property in Falls Township is attractive due to the shrinking number of large development sites in the Philadelphia region.

U.S. Steel owns the majority of the land that makes up the Keystone Industrial Port Complex, which includes numerous industrial and manufacturing companies and the deep water international port and terminal that is operated by Kinder Morgan. U.S. Steel has shut down most of their operations at the site over the decades, but the company website states the cold-rolled steel products made at western Pennsylvania plants are finished into galvanized sheets for use in the automotive, home construction, appliance, and metal building industries at the site.

The U.S. Steel Fairless Works complex was home to a steel mill, a coke (fuel used in the steel making process) production plant, steel making, forging operations, a powerhouse, and chemical plant. It opened in 1952 and employed more than 5,000 workers by the 1970s, fueling growth in the Levittown and surrounding areas. Over the years, U.S. Steel cut thousands of positions and in 2001 closed the majority of the site. As of 2009, about 100 U.S. Steel employees worked at the site as the company continued demolishing buildings that were unused.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state began working to clean up contamination of trichloroethylene, a solvent, and heavy metals found at the site. The cleanup led to redevelopment on parts of the site and the creation of jobs, according to state and federal government records.

The Keystone Industrial Port Complex was designated a Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone in the early 2000s, which allowed for companies to develop portions of the site at greatly reduced state and local tax rates. Many of those tax breaks have expired or are coming due.

Politicians for years have lauded the Keystone Industrial Port Complex as a successful public-private partnership that brought in tax revenues and jobs to the area after U.S. Steel shuttered most of their operations.

The Pennsbury School District, in documents submitted to the state for the current budget year, listed the U.S. Steel property as having the third largest property tax assessment in the district that makes up Falls Township, Lower Makefield Township, Tullytown Borough, and Yardley Borough. The only larger property owners were Waste Management and the firm that owns the shopping center off Oxford Valley Road across from the mall.

Waste Management, which operates its remaining Lower Bucks County landfills in Falls Township, owns large tracts of land surrounding the Keystone Industrial Port Complex. A phone call to a company spokesperson to see whether the international waste company has plans to bid on the property was not immediately answered.

The U.S. Steel Fairless Works location was named after company executive Benjamin Franklin Fairless, who also is the namesake for the Fairless Hills sections of Falls and Bristol townships.

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