Improvements to a few hundred feet of riverfront in Gilpin could have economic impacts that stretch across the region and beyond.
At least that’s what officials viewing progress on almost $3 million in upgrades to the barge dock at the Schenley Industrial Park are hoping.
“This is really exciting stuff,” said state Sen. Joe Pittman, R-Indiana.
He said the project is an example in real time of the economic impact the river stands to have on the immediate area and the entire region.
Coal from the northeastern part of Pennsylvania is often shipped to the dock on barges, then trucked off to steel mills in different parts of the country, Pittman said. The dock serves as a small hub for other materials being sent to different parts of the country.
He said the dock also is going to be used as a significant staging area for equipment that will be used for repurposing the former Homer City Generating Station property in Indiana County into a new power plant and datacenter later this year.
Located at milepost 30.8 on the Allegheny River north of Pittsburgh, it’s the last commercial dock going upriver from the city.
Its owner, Armstrong Terminal Inc., set out to renovate the dock in 2021, according to company president Samuel Lansberry.
The existing dock infrastructure was installed in the 1940s by the Joseph Finch Company, predecessor to the Schenley Whiskey distillery, Lansberry said. It was not designed to handle modern, heavier material unloading demands.
“We had a number of failures (unloading barges),” Lansberry said. “Only by the grace of God, we didn’t lose any equipment in the river or have any injuries.”
The former dock, he said, was not heavy enough and not driven deep enough into the riverbed to handle the kind of equipment used to unload river barges.
“Armstrong Terminal has been here since 1991,” Lansberry said. “We’re a dry bulk storage and handling company. We handle mostly agricultural products, and we ship all of these products to feed mills and other locations throughout the mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Midwest.”
Thursday morning, he presented a nearly finished dock approximately 400 feet long with new tie-backs, bollards, mooring rings, ladders and a new concrete working surface to support safer and more efficient operations. The project modernized the facility, representing nearly $2.86 million in improvements to the commercial docking facility on the river.
The dock is projected to last for at least 80 years before replacements will be needed again, Lansberry said.
George Wick served as the sole engineer on the project. He said the new dock is able to increase efficiency. The dock can now accommodate unloading two to three barges at a time, Wick said.
Gilpin supervisor Charles Stull praised Wick’s advocacy during the project. In 2023, Wick came before the supervisors to request a change to the township’s flood plane ordinance so the project could start.
Stull said it took about six months to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make the amendment official and get the permit approved.
J. F. Shea Construction Inc. began the work in September and is expected to complete the project at the end of this month.
Lansberry said the new dock also enables the company to expand from strictly moving dry bulk to heavier materials, including steel coils and the power station equipment.
“Sam (Lansberry) was very clear that, if we did not make this investment in the infrastructure, that opportunity wouldn’t exist,” Pittman said.
The five jobs officially created by the project so far, said Lansberry, really don’t represent the total number of jobs the project affects.
“The workforce is actually not just W2 employees here, but actually we have truck traffic that comes in from trucking companies as well as other independent contractors that would be working in the area,” Lansberry said.
Once completed, this project is expected to triple the facility’s capacity and workforce, Lansberry said.
The dock is near Lock 5, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Allegheny River has eight locks in total. Lansberry said the Corps reviewed the entire project in the development phases.
“Lock service is based off of lockages, which is the number of watercraft that go through the lock either up or down,” Lansberry said. “The more barges we can get here, the better service that we’ll get from the Army Corps of Engineers.”
According to the Corps, Lock and Dam 5 was built from 1920 to 1927 and opened in 1927. Lock 5 consists of a single lock chamber and a fixed crest dam. This type of dam is a concrete weir or wall across the river which keeps the river channel upriver of the project deep enough for navigation — about 9 feet or more.
According to past reports from the Corps, Lock 5 averages 130 commercial uses, transporting 52,000 tons of commodities, annually. The lock averages about 355 recreational uses, totaling about 576 vessels.
The dock project was paid for, in part, by a $1 million Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Commonwealth Financing Authority Multimodal Transportation Fund Grant, and an $800,000 PennDOT Multimodal Transportation Fund Grant. Armstrong Terminal, Inc. pledged just over $1 million to cover the rest.
Lansberry said the dock needs about two more weeks of work before it’s operational.