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Bethlehem Steel site may have new tenant

Welded Tube Website photo
Welded Tube, Concord Bowes Road Plant

The region is on the edge of getting a major new manufacturing plant on the site of the old Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna.

If all of the dotted "i"s and crossed "t"s fall into place, Welded Tube of Canada is planning to put $50 million  into a new facility in the Tecumseh Business Park on the old steel plant site.

The first phase would be a 100,000 square-foot manufacturing facility housing a state-of-the-art pipe mill with more buildings and more spending in the future. The plant will be making pipe for a lot of different purposes, but especially for the natural gas "fracking" industry.

Buffalo Niagara Enterprise President and CEO Thomas Kucharski says it took some time to get Welded Tube here.

"It brings another Canadian company and it gets a part of redevelopment of our region that we've been trying for quite some time to get the right pieces in place," said Kucharski. 

"It looks like it's moving forward."

Welded Tube is expected to hire 25 people as the project starts up and more as the plant becomes fully operational.

Mike Desmond is one of Western New York’s most experienced reporters, having spent nearly a half-century covering the region for newspapers, television stations and public radio. He has been with WBFO and its predecessor, WNED-AM, since 1988. As a reporter for WBFO, he has covered literally thousands of stories involving education, science, business, the environment and many other issues. Mike has been a long-time theater reviewer for a variety of publications and was formerly a part-time reporter for The New York Times.