Beaver County seeing business boom from Shell Cracker plant

BEAVER COUNTY, Pa. — On a sunny Monday, Beaver is seeing the business.  Over the last few years that business has stemmed from the Shell Cracker plant.

“It’s going to help the economy I mean it has to its jobs,” said Ray Alstadt from Beaver.

During the construction phase, the project brought 8000 jobs to the area. That’s more people in the hotels and eating in the restaurants. Some businesses told Channel 11 they had 400 sandwich orders a week for the workers.

“We actually survived the pandemic with the hospitality businesses a little better than we would have without them being here,” said Lewis Villotti, president of Beaver County’s Corporation for Economic Development.

Now the shift is coming. Construction is wrapping and the plant will officially open this summer with 600 permanent jobs.

“If you were at a conference you’d say we are from the Pittsburgh area and now they ask the question, are you anywhere near that shell cracker plant that cracker plant that’s being building,” Villotti said.

Villotti said that buzz is now bringing new business and other big-name companies to Beaver.

“We have hundreds of acres of property we represent, and hundreds of acres others present and in the last month and a half there has been activity on all of those sites. Some sites have four or five companies looking at them at one time,” Villotti said.

While there are less people with the plant opening, the impact is still here. Villotti said some of those workers are even choosing to stay with the company or in the area which means more residential properties are being purchased too.

Now residents are hopeful the benefits continue countywide in the years to come.

“It’s the way it works. Where there’s jobs there’s money where there’s money there’s taxes and where there’s taxes there’s progress,” Alstadt said.

While Villotti said they measure the economic impact by excitement of the project, Robert Morris University put a dollar amount on it.

In a recent study, just Beaver County will have up to $846 million dollars in economic activity and statewide we are looking at $3.7 billion dollars.

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