By Joseph N. DiStefano, Inquirer Staff Writer
Philadelphia officials are assembling property at the former
Frankford Arsenal site in Northeast Philadelphia for use by cold-cuts-makerDietz
& WatsonInc. as a new warehouse and trucking center.
The new facility would replace the 260,000-square-foot
facility in Delanco, Burlington County that burned down in 2013. That
seven-year-old warehouse employed 130 people.
A new warehouse on the proposed property would be convenient
to Dietz & Watson's nearby headquarters on Tacony Street - and a coup for
the city at the expense of New Jersey, which has been offering buckets of cash
to employers in an attempt to lure them from Pennsylvania or stop them from
moving away.
Real estate and city sources confirmed Dietz & Watson is
the focus of city ordinances introduced in April that would swap city and state
property tracts to make way for an unnamed industrial user on land near the
Delaware River south of Dietz & Watson's offices and deli-meat production
plant.
The ordinances are scheduled for a City Council vote as soon
as Thursday. They were introduced with backing from Councilman Bobby Henon,
a union electrician who has made restoring industrial jobs in old factory neighborhoods
along the Delaware one of his priorities.
Henon also supports rezoning the former Philadelphia
Coke Co. property, which had been targeted for riverside residences that
were never built, to attract industrial employers.
I'm told by a person familiar with proposals for that site
that a computer-recycling company has expressed interest. City planners have
supported proposals to return both the Coke and Arsenal sites to industrial
use.
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