Turning Former Coal Land Into an E-Commerce Fulfillment Hub
Photo: Unsplash/@wocintechchat
Bill Costanzo spent three years navigating environmental remediation requirements to turn a reclaimed strip mine site outside Scranton into a 210,000-square-foot fulfillment center, a project he says taught him more about state environmental permitting than any business school course could.
"People assume the hard part is construction," Costanzo said. "The hard part was proving to regulators, year after year, that groundwater conditions on a former mine site were stable enough to build on safely."
The facility now handles fulfillment for a dozen regional online retailers who previously shipped from smaller, less efficient warehouses scattered across the region. Costanzo says the site's rail access, a legacy of its mining history, has become an unexpected advantage for shippers looking to avoid trucking costs on certain routes.
He acknowledges the project would not have penciled out without state brownfield redevelopment tax credits, which offset a meaningful share of remediation costs.
"Nobody builds on a former mine site because it's the easy option," Costanzo said. "You do it because the land is available and cheap, and you're willing to do the work everyone else wants to skip."
