Industrial Park

One person was injured yesterday in an Ocean County industrial-park fire that forced authorities to evacuate about 2,000 homes in a nearby senior citizens' development. The fire occurred at the P&D Auto Supply Co. in the Toms River industrial park on Route 37 about 10:30 a.m., said Dover Township Patrolman Kenneth Leone. The evacuations at the Holiday City development in Berkeley Township began about 11 a.m., and residents were not allowed to return home for two hours, a police dispatcher said.

The West Caln Planning Commission has recommended final approval for a 136- acre, 49-lot industrial park near the Chester County Airport after months of give-and-take between the Lancaster County developer and township officials. Within only 15 minutes at Wednesday's meeting, the commission recommended final approval. All summer, the commission and township supervisors ironed out details of the plan, requesting the widening of Airport Road from the Route 30 Bypass beyond the Highland Corporate Center to South Bonsall Road because of a sharp curve near the end of the industrial park's boundaries.

A developer seeking to build an industrial park that would straddle Tredyffrin and Willistown was told by the Tredyffrin Planning Commission on Thursday that his major problems lie in the area of drainage and parking. Stephen Aichele, a councilman who is the liaison to the Planning Commission, told developer Milton Furey that Tredyffrin would accept Willistown's requirements for the special industrial district at Industrial Park and Cedar Hollow Road. Most of the district is in Willistown.

The West Caln Planning Commission has recommended approval for a 136-acre, 49-lot industrial park near the Chester County Airport without discussing what some officials have said were hazardous conditions on Airport Road, the subdivision's only access. The commission's approval Wednesday came five months after Valley Township had given its preliminary approval to the Highland Corporate Center, which has been proposed for 100 acres in Valley and 36 acres in West Caln. The center would lie north of the Route 30 Bypass, with Airport Road intersecting it. High Associates of Lancaster, the developers of four other industrial parks, would widen 18-foot Airport Road to 24 feet along the industrial park's boundaries, then taper back the road to 18 feet beyond the park.

Vandalism and the downturn in the economy are threatening the expansion of an industrial park that once promised to spark the renewal of one of Bristol Township's poorest and most drug-ridden neighborhoods. The Magnolia Industrial Park - 11 businesses that have risen from a field of garbage over the last four years - has found no takers for its new 11,000- square-foot office condominium. Officials for the Bristol Township Industrial Development Corporation, the nonprofit group that runs the park, said Magnolia can survive the economic slowdown, which has stalled commercial and industrial development virtually across the nation.

A public hearing about a plan to build a marina and an industrial park on 52 acres along the Darby Creek in Norwood has been delayed until at least September. At Norwood's borough council meeting Monday, Borough Solicitor Barry Dozor told the council that representatives of land owners Richard C. Geisinger and Faye Goodman had granted the delay, pending an appraisal of the land and negotiations on its purchase for inclusion in the Tinicum National Environmental Center, across the Darby Creek from Norwood.

A developer has submitted plans to build an industrial park on a 30-acre tract on the northwest side of Jacksonville Road in Warminster, between County Line and Street Roads. Representatives of the firm, the 309 Development Co., presented the plans to the township planning commission Wednesday night. The company is seeking eight industrial warehouses for the tract. The commission technically rejected the plans, but company representatives said they would submit corrected ones in April.

Colwyn residents have complained about dumpsters at the Delaware County Business Plaza, saying hazardous waste could be stored at the industrial park. Residents, the business park owner and his attorney attended a borough council meeting Thursday, where they discussed waste stored in the bins. "In a township of this size, already fighting dumping problems, we don't need to take the risk of storing hazardous waste, like asbestos, on another site," said James Melvin, of the 400 block of South 5th Street, who lives near the park.

Any time the military decides to close an installation, two things are sure: It will take a long time before the lights go out, and even longer for the site to find a new use. In Philadelphia, the former Navy Yard is being transformed into a business hub. In February, city officials celebrated that 10,000 jobs and 130 companies are now located there. It took more than a decade to get to that point after the Navy signed over 1,000 acres in 2001. Kansas encountered its own military conflict when a massive ammunition plant in Parsons was placed on the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC)

A 50-year-old Gloucester County man died Monday when he fell through the roof of a recycling center in a Camden industrial park. The victim, of Franklinville, was cleaning the roof of the building on the 2200 block of Mount Ephraim Avenue when he fell to an elevated platform several feet off the floor shortly before 8:30 a.m., the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. His identity was not released. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident. Authorities said the man died at the scene of multiple injuries.

Goodwill wants your stuff: old sneaks, designer dresses, even that wine-stained tablecloth. In this downsizing economy, Goodwill Industries of Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia is expanding its stores and drop-off centers, and has started the area's first regional outlet in Bellmawr, Camden County. The nonprofit also is hiring workers. Tuesday, local politicians joined Goodwill executives to open the outlet in an industrial park on Benigno Boulevard, off the Black Horse Pike.

CARACOL, Haiti - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton encouraged foreigners to invest in Haiti as she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, led a star-studded delegation gathered Monday to inaugurate a new industrial park at the center of U.S. efforts to help the country rebuild after the 2010 earthquake. Actors Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, fashion designer Donna Karan, and British business magnate Richard Branson were among the luminaries at the opening of the new Caracol Industrial Park, projected to create thousands of jobs more than 100 miles from the quake-ravaged capital of Port-au-Prince.

IT'S A MOONLESS Thursday night in North Wales, Montgomery County. Down a dead-end street just past the giant Merck & Co. pharmaceutical plant, tucked along the SEPTA R5 railroad tracks, a darkened industrial building attracts a young crowd. The unpaved parking lot is full, light sounds of live jazz seep from the rear door, and the air carries the familiar aroma of malt. Welcome to Prism Brewing's Tap Room, one of the region's best-kept beer-drinking secrets and, it turns out, a harbinger of a remarkable surge of suburban breweries.

HOUSTON - Buckets of rain and powerful winds that apparently spawned several tornadoes swept across Texas on Wednesday, forcing drivers to abandon cars on flooded roads but not dropping enough water to make up for a historic dry spell. The squall of storms swept from north to south, first pounding Dallas and Fort Worth overnight. As the storms inched south and settled over central Texas and Austin, record amounts of rain - more than five inches in some areas of the capital - drenched areas that just a few months ago battled the most devastating wildfires the state had ever seen.

A Pennsylvania environmental-advocacy group has come up with a plan to keep natural-gas drillers from bringing their rigs, trucks, pipelines, and noise into pristine state parks. The short version: Get them to pledge not to do it. John H. Quigley, former secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), which manages the parks, thinks the drillers have an incentive. "Drilling in state parks is going to provoke public outrage," he said Thursday in announcing the plan, proposed by Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future and dubbed "Don't drill through the heart of Pennsylvania.

JOPLIN, MO. - Seniors and juniors are taking classes in a converted big-box store. Freshmen and sophomores are in a building across town. The new middle school is in an industrial park. Across Joplin, the schools are still a jumble, with books, computer monitors, and unassembled furniture littering unfamiliar hallways. But as classes resumed Wednesday, students and teachers welcomed the start of another year as a return to something normal - or what passes for normal in a city crippled last spring by the nation's single deadliest tornado in six decades.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Philadelphia has already staked its claim as a player in the national craft beer movement, with dozens of local brewers producing top-notch beer. Could the newest wave in artisan drink rolling our way from the West Coast - the craft spirit movement - be the next obsession to slake Philly's thirst with potent shots of white corn "Shine" and "Petty's Island Rum"? It just might, if Rob Cassell of Philadelphia Distilling and James Yoakum of Cooper River Distillers realize their dreams.

Boeing needed space to set up a new modification facility for its huge Chinook helicopters. The Millville Airport had it: two massive, empty hangars not far from the company's Ridley Park site, where the Chinooks are made, or the Baltimore port, where many are loaded onto ships bound for the Middle East. For the company, the move into Cumberland County, celebrated with a ribbon-cutting and praise from politicians this month, just made sense. For Millville, which has an unemployment rate among the highest in South Jersey, Boeing could be a game-changer.