BETHLEHEM, Pa. – 300 in. One out.
The Lehigh Valley’s success story in wooing pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to the area was in the spotlight during the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC) 2026 annual meeting.
The standing-room-only event, held at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, was the group’s largest in its 31-year history, said President and CEO Don Cunningham.
“On this St Patrick’s Day, we welcome old friends and new, we remember our past, we prepare for our future, and we celebrate the journey that leads us from one to the other,” Cunningham told the crowd.
While the meeting is meant to highlight all of the region’s most recent business successes, the Eli Lilly deal, the largest economic development project in Lehigh Valley history, was the obvious choice to serve as the centerpiece.
About 300 sites across the U.S. were in competition for the manufacturing center, but, in the end, it was just one — Upper Macungie Township — left standing.
The $3.5 billion investment was announced in January. It’s expected to create 850 permanent jobs and calls for a multi-building, 925,000-square-foot campus on farmland near the Fogelsville Corporate Center off I-78.
The facility will manufacture Lilly’s injectable medications used for weight-loss. It’s expected to be operational in 2031.
Why the Lehigh Valley?
Cunningham participated in a panel discussion with Daniel VonDielingen (nickname: DVD), a senior vice president at Eli Lilly; Jay Biggins, with Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co., the site selection company used by Lilly; and Ben Kirshner, Pennsylvania’s chief transformation and opportunity officer, about the Lilly deal.
How did the Lehigh Valley beat out 299-ish other sites in some 40 states? In short, a lot of hard work, and a lot of cooperation from everyone from Lilly’s top brass to local leaders and utility companies. “These things don’t just happen,” Cunningham said.
It was an 18-month process, Kirshner added, with “twice-a-week meetings with the LVEDC folks, with the state.”Â
The Lehigh Valley checked all the boxes, Biggins said, including having the necessary infrastructure in place and having a talent pool at the ready. As part of the deal, Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC) is getting a $5 million state investment to develop a specialized science and technology lab.
Biggins also noted that, while new business deals are announced every day, very few meet the scale of the Eli Lilly project. “You have to understand, this is fundamentally a process of elimination,” he said. “Only one site, only one place, survives through this process. 300 in, one out.”Â
Peeking behind the curtain
VonDielingen also delivered remarks separate from the panel, in which he gave a sneak peek at how the new drug manufacturing campus in Upper Macungie will function. “We’re an innovation-based company. Our pipeline is innovation. I believe you will say that the facility that will be built here is also an innovation-based facility,” he said.
The campus will include an administration building, a quality control laboratory, a manufacturing building, and a warehouse. Like other Lilly facilities, it relies on automation for some tasks.
“In some facilities, you’ll see people on fork trucks and moving material around on pallet jacks. You won’t see that in our facilities,” said VonDielingen. “When this one is fully up and running, the only time that you’ll see a person on a fork truck or handling a pallet jack will be at the tractor-trailer that offloads and on-loads material to campus.”
The warehouse, specifically, will use what the company calls retrieval system technology.
“The warehouse has no humans in it,” VonDielingen said. “It will pick the material when it’s called for and deliver it on automated guided vehicles.”
The 850 positions on the campus are expected to be high-paying jobs in the $100k salary range. Traditionally, in opening a new facility like the one coming to Upper Macungie, Eli Lilly has made about 90% of the new hires externally and locally to the community. The company expects to do the same in the Lehigh Valley.
“Essentially, we’re looking for exceptional people to make exceptional medicine,” said VonDielingen.
Eli Lilly will also aim to keep those employees happy with an outdoor amphitheater, a fitness center, and an amenity center that includes a space for group gatherings.
And last but not least, Gov. Shapiro
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was the event’s final speaker. He noted that he also spoke at LVEDC’s 2023 annual meeting, shortly after taking office.
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At lot has changed since then, he said: “Before I took office as your governor, we really weren’t even on the field of competition. Too many other states were winning the big deals while we unfortunately were left behind.”
But now, “Pennsylvania is winning again,” Shapiro said.
The Democratic governor, who is running for re-election this year, said his administration made it a priority to fix Pennsylvania’s economic development toolkit. That included streamlining the process of securing a business permit or license.
“We established a system that guarantees speed,” said Shapiro. “We tell you when you apply for your permit, how long it’s going to take to get to the permit, and if we miss that deadline, for the first time ever, we’ll give you your money back.”
Over the past three years, Pennsylvania has processed applications for over 40 million permits, licenses and applications across 22 agencies, while only missing its deadline five times, Shapiro said.
Another stat the governor put out there: since his tenure began, Pennsylvania has secured more than $40 billion in private sector investment, creating more than 22,000 jobs. “That level of economic growth represents the entirety of the last 15 years of economic growth in Pennsylvania combined,” Shapiro said.
The Lehigh Valley is a key cog in that machine, with a $57.3 billion Gross Domestic Product, larger than the economies of the entire states of Vermont and Wyoming. About $9 billion of that tally (or 16%) comes from manufacturing, thanks to the region’s 700+ manufacturers.
Also, Site Selection magazine recently named the Lehigh Valley the No. 1 mid-sized U.S. market for economic development, another achievement that was celebrated at Tuesday’s event.
“The Valley has proven itself time and time again over the years as a major player when it comes to economic development, a major driver of our economy in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said.