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Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
I agree. SouthCentralPA is going to play a pivotal role in getting PA as a whole out of the economic duldrums.
With the coming cuts to (state) corporate income taxes, Shapiro's strategic plan to focus on stem and high tech manufacturing, and hopefully, a long overdue increase in the state's minimum wage...I think all of the second tier cities within a 90 mile radius of Philly are going to boom.
If there were a focus to make a concerted effort to land bigger manufacturing plants in PA, they'd land in those counties (Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Berks, Dauphin, Cumberland, Lehigh, etc).
Super excited for the future of this region.
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This is going to be more complicated than it may look on paper for a few reasons:
- The mentality in SCPA is backwards and they do not like change, even if it is good change.
- It is still very sprawl-centric and they lag behind what some of the other parts of the US are doing e.g. town centers, denser infill.
- Public transit is basically non-existent.
- It is getting as expensive as much bigger, cooler cities and coming with the negatives (traffic, expensive and competitive rental/housing market) but yet getting none of the benefits a bigger place gets you.
- The brain drain is still a big problem.
- State and Hershey employment is not the draw that it once was and it is now just as, if not more, unstable than other industries.
I have been hearing, "The boom is a comin'!" my entire life and I have yet to see it actually pan out because of the above. Yeah things can change, but when you look at any place that takes off it has some of the building blocks already in place and something that made it unique (e.g. Nashville had the music scene and built off of that) but there's just nothing that unique about SCPA right now...hell, one of its big selling points used in marketing is still, "We are close to better places."