BENTON TWP., PA — Crystal Window & Door Systems, the award-winning national manufacturer and parent company of the fledgling window manufacturing operation in Benton Twp., has announced a new name for their industrial property in Lackawanna County. Now titled as the Crystal Pennsylvania Business Park, the 226-acre site was formerly known in the real estate community as Benton Park. Currently Crystal Windows operates a growing fenestration manufacturing operation in the existing 336,000 s/f two building on the property. Crystal Windows acquired the property and building in October 2015.The new name is intended to capitalize on Crystal’s growing national name recognition to attract national and international businesses to locate operations in the park. Crystal foresees the businesses being primarily fenestration-related and specializing in manufacturing, fabrication, warehousing, or administrative office operations. Some of the future businesses may be suppliers to Crystal Windows or subsidiaries or spin-offs of the company itself. Leading national commercial/industrial realtor JLL has been retained to identify and attract firms to the Crystal Pennsylvania Business Park.
“Leveraging the Crystal brand to rename the business park is the first step in further developing the property and attracting businesses and jobs to the region,” said Thomas Chen, CEO and owner of Crystal Windows. “We chose the Scranton area and Lackawanna County in Northeastern PA for many great reasons and we feel that other companies will also see the value and be similarly excited to locate their operations here.”
Crystal Windows anticipates the development of the industrial/commercial park will play out over a 15-year horizon. While the company acknowledges the renaming is early in the process, it will be initiating site planning activities focused on gradual development of the property. Concurrent with development of the 226-acre industrial property, Crystal will continue its renovation of the existing building and expansion of window manufacturing operations. The estimated total future employment in the business park, including the Crystal Windows manufacturing operations, might exceed 500-600 employees.
“Our development efforts will be done intelligently with the utmost sensitivity towards the environment, wetlands, existing infrastructure, and surrounding homeowners and community,” said Steve Chen, Crystal’s COO and son of Thomas Chen.
The 226-acre Crystal Pennsylvania Business Park lies between I-81 exits 201 and 202, and is roughly bounded by the Interstate highway on the east, Franklin Valley Road on the west, and SR 107 on the north. The Crystal Window & Door Systems PA manufacturing operation is situated in the former Owens Corning 336,000 s/f industrial building. Crystal renovated a portion of the building and began producing windows there early in 2016. Currently the operation employs approximately 35 workers and produces three of the company’s most popular aluminum window and sliding patio door product lines.