A site in Upper Saucon Township that could soon hold a large warehouse complex has been sold for $150 million.
Lehigh County property records show the 118-acre parcel along East Valley Road was sold in September to Lehigh E Valley RD IND Owner from Kay-Lehigh LLC.
Lehigh E Valley, a limited liability company in Clayton, Missouri, is owned by Panattoni Development, which describes itself as “one of the largest privately held, full-service real estate development companies in the world” on its website.
Upper Saucon Manager Thomas Beil said the township has already approved 309 Commerce Center, a complex consisting of three warehouses totaling 1.77 million square feet. The land is near Route 309 and Center Valley Parkway.
Beil said dirt is already being moved for the project.
“They haven’t started on construction of the warehouse,” Beil told The Morning Call on Monday, “but they’re doing all the public improvements and everything that you need to do before you start work on the warehouse.”
If Panattoni makes any changes to the project, it must go through the township, Beil said.
Johan Henriksen, a Panattoni partner who runs the firm’s Lehigh Valley office, was not immediately available for comment.
Kay-Lehigh, which bought the land in 2020 for $21 million, moved the proposal through the approval process. It was met with skepticism from some Upper Saucon residents during meetings in 2023. They were concerned about increased truck traffic and whether Route 309 was capable of handling it.
Township officials said there was little they could do to stop the development. The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission lauded the proposal because the location fits into its regional plan, as Route 309 is a major road that provides a direct link to Interstate 78.
PennDOT is planning to improve Route 309 through the area with a $71 million project to convert its intersection with Center Valley Parkway and West Saucon Valley Road into a grade-separated interchange. The current signalized intersection averages about 79,000 vehicles per day and has been the site of many crashes.
Work on the intersection is scheduled to begin in late 2026 and be completed by 2030.
Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.