Down River 5/6

 

By John Lipez

A Great Day for Coxswain Flanagan:
Mike Flanagan, long time CEO for the Clinton County Economic Partnership, loves his sports analogies. His periodic news updates to the media on pending projects in the county are often peppered (as in the old baseball warm-up drill) with such analogies.

With stories about First Quality’s periodic expansions, the Flan updates will see the project has “reached first base” or “heading to second” or “rounding third and heading home.”

So it was no surprise as Down River went looking for background in its document archives when word arrived last week on the DEP permit approval for the long, long pending Renovo Energy project. There it was, dated April 6, 2015, when therecord-online broke the initial word on that project. CEO Flanagan’s comments on that date said, among other things, “Right now everyone is rowing in the same direction.”

Fast forward to May 2021 when (again) therecord-online was the first to post word on the long, long awaited DEP permit approval for the project. This time we saw this sports analogy from Mr. Flanagan as he offered thanks to the many moving to bring the $800 million project to fruition: “Rowing in the same direction goes a long way for a project of this magnitude.”

(Interestingly, Flan’s fixation on rowing may stem from his participation with the Lewistown High School rowing team, a club sport on the Juniata River at that Mifflin County school in the late 1970s).

So it makes for a good analogy. The rowing together needs to continue as best it can over the next several years, particularly in western Clinton County. The REC project brings good economic news, a tremendous impact short term, something less but not unsubstantial long term. In addition to the dollars, the project construction phase will also bring challenges to the local community and its societal infrastructure: hundreds of transients looking for lodging, food and social amenities.

We’re already seeing an influx of “out-of-towners” in the Renovo area now, an estimated 75 pipeline workers involved on a project parsing through the old Little Italee portion of Chapman Township and elsewhere. You see the RVs housing these transients around the Renovo area, some as far away as the Clinton County Fairgrounds in the southern end of the county.

Wait until the number of construction types is 400 or 500 or 600 as the REC project enters its serious construction phase, one to last for more than two years.

Get ready, Renovo, get ready Clinton County. Challenges are ahead; as Flan might say, “Make sure your oars are well sanded and varnished, at optimum operating efficiency.”

Relative to word from DEP, one gets the sense there is a sense of relief among project proponents within the county. The run-up to the final DEP air quality permit approval certainly took longer than many thought. Bycompletion time, barring further unanticipated delays, it will be going on nearly a decade from when first word of the concept was heard in 2014.

The Record was aware in 2014 of the natural gas-to-electricity plant possibility, one of a couple Renovo industrial park possibilities that local economic types were trying to entice here (I think the other had to do with coal cars, but I’m not completely sure). Down River kept quiet about this for a year or so, not always easily done.

Thus it was in April of 2015 information was released to the public. The lead paragraph in our story said, “The Clinton County Economic Partnership has announced that it is working with a business known as Renovo Energy Center LLC to locate a state of the art gas fired power plant at the Renovo Industrial Park. The company would convert natural gas into electricity for use on the power grid.”

That same story said local officials had been working on the project since the summer of 2014 and that the REC folks had an option on the old rail yard site with owners Renovo Rail and Bobby Maguire. The economic partnership said a “lengthy due diligence process” would continue over the next several months.

As for a time frame, Flanagan said, the project had up to 18 months of planning and permitting matters to get through, “Let’s hope it’s a 2017 project.”

And it was the week that the story broke that the partnership took county movers-and-shakers on a bus tour of county industrial sites. As The Record story said, “An afternoon stop at the site in Renovo is expected to be the focal point of the tour.” It surely was. Longtime Renovo native/booster Dan Harger was beaming from ear-to-ear the whole time.

The 2017 time frame to start the project, due to a myriad of reasons, turned out to be a little premature. But here we are, May of 2021 and here we go.

The old yards across the tracks from Renovo’s downtown have sat vacant for some time now. There had been a number of different employers there over the decades since the Pennsylvania Railroad pulled out better than half a century ago; none of the post-PRR employers were able to provide sustained employment for western Clinton County residents.

But this spring, hope springs yet again for something more promising for the old rail yardsite. The REC folks say some 25 to 30 permanent jobs will result once the estimated 32 month construction phase is completed. The Record joins the greater Renovo area and all of Clinton County with the hope that the REC project will be the spring board to a new era for Renovo. Coupled with the solar panel project up Route 120 towards Keating and the massive West Keating natural gas synthesis plant project still in its infancy, the next decade looks promising for western Clinton County.

And, yes, the word Renovo is of Latin derivation, its meaning renew, restore, revive. Once a thriving resort town a long, long time ago, this could be the revival the good folks of Renovo have been waiting for.