MedCare plans move from Monroeville to Penn Township with new distribution center

Guardian Construction will begin work on the 100,000-square-foot facility soon. It is expected to open by June 2021.

MedCare will occupy 75,000 square feet. PRL Motorsports will occupy the rest, moving from its current location in Bushy Run Corporate Park to a space more than twice as large.

The building will serve as the central distribution center for MedCare, Mastandrea said. It’s almost twice as large as the company’s distribution center on Rico Drive in Monroeville, which it will replace.

The company’s offices will remain in Greensburg.

MedCare has seven distribution centers and 350 employees. When the building is done, 50 employees will move from Monroeville to Penn Township, and the company plans eventually to hire an additional 20 people at the new location, Mastandrea said.

The company provides wheelchair, canes, hospital beds, respiratory equipment and other medical equipment.

The new site is next door to Airgas, a supplier of industrial and medical gasses and a major supplier for MedCare’s oxygen tanks.

MedCare has partnerships with Excela Health, Conemaugh Health System, Heritage Valley Health System, Butler Health System, Washington Health System, Indiana Regional Medical Center, St. Clair Hospital and UPMC.

Weaver Investments Inc., which owns many of the lots in the industrial park, received a $2.25 million loan from the Pennsylvania Industrial Authority for the building. The project will also receive a property tax break.

“The development in this park has been very strong,” said Glen Weaver, president of Weaver Investments.

The new facility will be the seventh building in the park within the last four years, Weaver said.

The MedCare facility was not Weaver’s first plan for the site. He had originally hoped to build a 140,000-square-foot athletic complex.

“Weaver Investments really struggled to find the right partner to take on such a liability with, and those negotiations broke down,” he said.

Penn Township Commissioner Larry Harrison said the new facility fits into the township’s plan to be more business-friendly. The township has long been known as a bedroom community, filled with people who live there but work elsewhere. Officials are trying to change that, Harrison said.

“We as a township need to get a better balance between our residential tax base and our commercial or industrial tax base, and this is certainly a big step in that direction,” he said.