ALLENTOWN, Pa. — One of the teams working on the long-touted Allentown Commerce Park is set to ask city planning officials for more time — again.
Allentown City Planning Commission in September 2023 granted two-year extensions for several parts of a project to build a massive warehouse at the site of the old Mack Trucks assembly plant in south Allentown.
Benchmark Civil Engineering on Tuesday is expected to ask planning officials for more time as it works to build a 154,000-square-foot warehouse on an adjacent property that was part of the initial proposal approved almost a decade ago.
The planning commission granted conditional approval for plans at the site in October 2016. That gave developers two years to enter into a land-development agreement with the city.
But the project didn’t move forward before the late 2018 deadline.
Allentown Commerce Park Corp. sought and received a two-year extension in November 2021, more than five years after the project first earned approval.
More extensions, coffee shop plan
It was back in September 2023 for another two-year extension on plans to demolish the former factory along Mack Boulevard and replace it with a warehouse that would total more than 1.1 million square feet.
Planning officials also gave the developer two more years to start work on the smaller warehouses, the first extensions for those plans.
Attorney Joe Fitzpatrick two years ago said the COVID-19 pandemic threw the developer’s “best-laid plans into disarray.”
Mack Trucks opened its Allentown headquarters 120 years ago under the name Mack Brothers Co. The corporation moved its headquarters to South Carolina in 2010, while its assembly plant relocated to Macungie.
Allentown City Planning Commission also is scheduled to take another look at a drive-thru-only coffee shop.
Members last month tabled 7 Brew Coffee’s proposal to open at 2952 Lehigh St. over concerns about how much traffic it could create.
The coffee chain has more than 300 locations across 32 states.
