The Citizens Voice: Interview with Jim Cummings of Mericle Commercial Real Estate/TCN Worldwide
Region sees a shift in shopping habits...
A shift in the way people are shopping can be seen in the latest jobs numbers from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry.
As more people shop online, jobs in the warehousing, transportation and utilities sectors — which support retail and e-commerce — in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton/Hazleton area increased by about 2,300 over the last year to 23,200.
Warehouse, transportation jobs on rise. As more people shop online, huge warehouses have opened throughout Northeast Pennsylvania in recent years creating thousands of jobs.
At the same time, transportation jobs were created for those who deliver the goods to people’s homes and utilities workers have been needed to perform routine maintenance.
Northeast Pennsylvania has been emerging as a preferred location for distribution centers, said Jim Cummings, vice president of marketing for Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services.
Factors that companies seeking locations for distribution centers consider to be most important include proximity to their customers, suppliers and shipping ports; the availability of a building or site that meets their real estate needs; immediate interstate access; cost of real estate; cost and availability of labor; proximity to shipping resources — such as FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service; and availability of transportation companies, Cummings said.
“The transportation industry has branded Eastern Pennsylvania as the ‘I-81/I-78 Corridor,’” he said.
When companies seek sites for distribution centers, they consider properties along I-81 from the Scranton area south to the Maryland border and along I-78 from the Lehigh Valley to New Jersey.
“Land and labor are becoming scarce in the Lehigh Valley and Greater Harrisburg area, which puts Northeastern Pennsylvania in a favorable position,” Cummings said. “We are starting to emerge as the preferred location along the I-81/I-78 Corridor.”
Wages at warehouses also on the rise
With the Lehigh Valley becoming saturated with warehouses, the demand for workers has increased and so have the wages, said Tom Ruskey, regional director for Manpower in Eastern Pennsylvania.
The starting salary at warehouses in the Lehigh Valley is about $14 per hour, compared to $11 or $12 per hour last year, he said.
The pay rates at some distribution centers are catching up to some manufacturing jobs and even surpassing them, he said.
Northeast Pennsylvania has not yet reached that saturation point for distribution centers, he said, and warehouse associates and material movers are typically being paid starting salaries of about $11 or $12 per hour while forklift drivers are starting at $13.75 to $15 per hour.
As more warehouses open, it has been more difficult to find workers and employers have been elevating their pay rates to cut down on turnover, Ruskey said.
At this time of year, he said, warehouses soon will start hiring more employees as the holiday shopping season approaches.
According to Cummings, more than 40 million square feet of bulk industrial space has been absorbed in Northeast Pennsylvania since 2000, most of it as distribution space.
Mericle has four new buildings under construction to keep up with current demand for industrial space, he said. Mericle is constructing a 520,000-square-foot industrial building and a 403,000-square-foot industrial building in CenterPoint Commerce & Trade Park East in Jenkins Twp. and a 105,000-square-foot building in the park. The company has also broken ground on a 201,500-square-foot industrial building in Humboldt Industrial Park near Hazleton.
These buildings have been constructed on speculation without leases signed by tenants. The hope is to find tenants while the buildings are under construction or when they are finished.
While all of the buildings have been designed to accommodate a wide variety of industrial users, including manufacturers, Cummings said early interest has been primarily from distribution companies.
Changes in shopping habits are driving much of the demand for space, he said
“E-commerce continues to grow at a tremendous rate,” Cummings said. “More and more people are doing their shopping online and having their orders shipped directly to their homes. Many of the companies that call us are seeking sites for e-commerce fulfillment centers. These facilities are often labor intensive so communities that have available workers and industrial real estate near interstates are winning a lot of these projects.”
Read more: http://citizensvoice.com/news/region-sees-a-shift-in-shopping-habits-1.2246781