Draft:SteelStacks

SteelStacks is an arts district and cultural campus on the former Bethlehem Steel steel mill complex in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It houses ArtsQuest, a (nonprofit that does arts things,) performance venue the Levitt Pavilion, the Bethlehem Visitor's Center, and Lehigh Valley Public Media’s offices and production studios.

The complex, designed by architects Wallace Roberts & Todd, is centered around the former blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel, and new buildings are still surrounded by the ruins of Bethlehem Steel facilities. It hosts a number of ArtsQuest festivals throughout the year, including multiple stages for Musikfest, and Christkindlmarkt.

The campus is near the National Museum of Industrial History and Wind Creek Bethlehem, both of which were also redeveloped from the former Bethlehem Steel brownfield.

Bethlehem Steel era
The predecessor to Bethlehem Steel began in 1857 as Saucona Iron Company. After facing initial difficulties, the company was reorganized as Bethlehem Rolling Mill and Iron Company in 1860, and changed its name to Bethlehem Iron Company in May 1861. Along with the name change, the company moved its headquarters to the South Side of Bethlhem, along the Lehigh river. The first blast furnace at the site began construction July 1, 1861, and began operation in early January, 1863. That same year, the company built the oldest building that survives as part of SteelStacks: the plant's former stock house, now the Bethlehem city visitor center.

In its early years, the company grew by producing rails for rapidly-expanding railroads in the region, along with armor plating for the United States Navy in the years following the U.S. Civil War. In the early 1880s, After years of downsizing, the Navy elected to rebuild the U.S. fleet with steel-hulled, steam-powered ships. Bethlehem Steel profited substantially from this decision by building a heavy forging plant to build heavy naval artillery and armor plating for these ships. By the early 1890s, the company had secured contracts with the Navy, built the first heavy forging plant in the U.S. at its Bethlehem works, and was in the process of completing another facility for naval armor plating. (SORT OUT TIMELINE)

As the end of the century approached, Bethlehem Iron Co.'s owners believed they could make the already-profitable company even more lucrative by focusing on steel instead of iron. The organization formally changed its name to the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1899, and reorganized as Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1904.

The company's Bethlehem works soon grew to cover more than 600 acres along three miles of the Lehigh River.

In 1912, the company awarded a $2,000,000 contract to Pennsylvania Engineering Company for a new "blast furnace A," which began operation by 1915. It is the oldest blast furnace preserved in SteelStacks.

The company's growth exploded in the following years as it profited enormously from World War I. The Bethlehem plant, too, continued to grow.

development of the Bethlehem Steel complex and expansion to its largest size. Try and find when each furnace was built/idled

At one point, there were seven blast furnaces, but two were demolished in the 60s after sitting unused for several years.

The end of steelmaking in Bethlehem
The company first began to encounter trouble in the mid-1970s as mini-mills and lower-cost foreign competition began to eat away at Bethlehem Steel's profitability. By 1980, the company began making cuts to operations at the Bethlehem works.

Amid mounting losses, and Bethlehem Steel's decisions to modernize other plants (but not the one in Bethlehem), company executives decided in 1994 that steelmaking would end in Bethlehem by the end of the next year. The site produced steel for the final time on November 18, 1995 using Blast Furnace C and the basic oxygen furnace.

Bethlehem Steel plans for redevelopment
Even as it fought to survive, the company also began to create plans for redeveloping the idle "hot side" of the plant around the blast furnaces. Shortly after the Bethlehem plant's "last cast," Bethlehem Steel relaunched an existing subsidiary responsible for managing the company's real estate, called the Bethlehem Development Corp., to preserve and redevelop parts of the plant. Stephen G. Donches, Bethlehem Steel's Vice President of Public Affairs, was put in charge of the redevelopment project and named the president of Bethlehem Development Corp.

Early in 1996, the City of Bethlehem approved zoning changes requested by Bethlehem Steel that substantially eased zoning restrictions on the type of property that could be built on the site by creating a broadly permissive "industrial redevelopment" zone covering 160 acres between the Fahy and Minsi Trail Bridges. The same year, Bethlehem Steel announced plans for a $450 million cultural and entertainment district called Bethlehem Works on the 160 acres, including a shopping center, hotels, a 14-screen movie theater and a Smithsonian Institution-affiliated National Museum of Industrial History. Bethlehem Steel announced in December 1996 it had hired Enterprise Development Co., a developer based in Columbia, Maryland, to evaluate whether Bethlehem Steel's previously announced plans for Bethlehem Works were feasible and to create a master plan for the site.

The Steel and its consultants unveiled their master plan for 163 acres in November of 1997. The plan called for the Steel's five remaining blast furnaces to remain intact, for first and second streets to be reopened to traffic, and for the proposed National Museum of Industrial History to occupy the 300,000-square-foot No. 2 Machine Shop. A commercial development on the site would include a 16-screen cinema, an ice skating center, an indoor swimming and diving facility, a "major sports retail store," two hotels and a 1,200-car parking garage.

In 1998, the city began the process of securing grants to build roads, utilities and other infrastructure for the Bethlehem Works redevelopment, even though Bethlehem Steel had not yet found development partners or tenants for any of the proposed buildings. By the fall of 1999, the city of Bethlehem was preparing to approve plans for infrastructure improvements. Several developers had expressed interest in the site, brovided the city first built (the infrastructure.) In January of 2000, after nearly a year of negotiations, Bethlehem Steel and the City of Bethlehem announced a deal whereby the city would pay to build utilities, roads and other infrastructure for the site, and the company would find companies to invest in building there. The city also committed to expedite future Bethlehem Works projects as they moved through its planning and permiting beuracracy, and to ceating a tax increment financing district to finance future projects. The road construction project broke ground November 13, 2000, with a list of developers ready to build a few of the proposed projects.

Meanwhile, Bethlehem Steel's downward spiral continued. The company closed the Bethlehem plant's combination mill in 1997. The last remaining piece of the company's operations in Bethlehem, the coke works, ceased operation March 29, 1998.

The Bethlehem Works project signed its first deal with an outside developer to purchase former Steel land on January 30, 2001.

However, as 2001 wore on, BethWorks began to encounter headwinds. Bethlehem Steel had spent $33 million on phase one of the project by June of that year, when it announced it would not be spending beyond phase one/indefinite delay/no phase two because of business problems. Phase one, estimated to cost $100 million in all, included retail shops, a hotel, a movie theater and a "museum preview center" for the industrial history museum. The company backed away from plans for a swimming center with an Olympic-size indoor pool in the former iron foundry after determining it would be too expensive to stabilize, and tearing it down instead. The complex's planned hotel and conference center stalled, with developers short on funding and unwilling to more forward until a critical mass of other projects were complete. By October 2001, investors behind a proposed bowling and family fun center planned for Bethlehem Works had cancelled the project.

Bankruptcy and sale
Bethlehem Steel's long-running business (woes) caught up with it amid surging imports of foreign-made steel, a sharp cut to auto production, market turmoil, and cancelled orders caused by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2001. The bankruptcy immediately threw the future of Bethlehem Works into jeopardy.

in 2003, the company sold its Bethlehem plant to (ISG Tecumseh), a subsidiary of International Steel Group.

On the eve of the sale, Bethlehem Steel was in talks with Delaware Valley Real Estate Investment Fund to build bethworks. Though the fund got as far as announcing a pending agreement of sale for the property, the fund pulled out of the project in the first half of 2004.

https://www.mcall.com/2002/03/18/bethlehem-works-has-new-hope/

uncertain future

The (heart) of the complex was purchased by developers BethWorks Now in 2004. https://www.mcall.com/2004/09/15/incredible-step-for-bethlehem-works/

BethWorks Now formed a partnership with Las Vegas Sands Corporation to develop (Sands Casino). (After negotiations with the Pennsylvaina gaming board,) the company agreed to donate 9.5 acres of the site to the City of Bethlehem (Redevelopment Authority?), WLVT-TV and ArtsQuest for a (cultural devlopment.)

Environmental Cleanup
In 1995, shortly after steel production ceased at the Bethlehem site, Bethlehem Steel began sampling water from three existing wells on the site and 16 newly-drilled observation wells. Soil samples were also gathered and tested for contaminants several times from 1995 to 1998. These tests found groundwater contamination with volatile organic compounds including trichloroethylene and trichloroethane, and soil in some places contaminated with heavy metals. The worst contamination appeared in soil near the plant's former sintering shop, where elevated levels of lead and arsenic were found.

To resolve the contamination, 237 cubic yards of material was removed from the future SteelStacks site between 1998 and 2002, including 123 tons of sand used in the metal casting process and contaminated with lead and cadmium. State and federal regulators also placed covenants on the land that bar future property owners from using groundwater from the property, or using it to build housing.

On May 6, 1999, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection approved soil and groundwater remediation projects on the (former Bethlehem Works site.) The EPA declared that the site was free of possible human exposure risks in January 2004, and that the spread of contaminants in groundwater was under control in September 2016.

Redevelopment begins
First PBS39 and ArtsQuest, in partnership with Sands/land donation

When did BethWorks become SteelStacks?

They were initially given former bethlehem steel buildings, but both ArtsQuest and Lehigh Valley Public Media instead opted to demolish the historic structures and build anew, saying the existing buildings didn't meet their needs.

Complex ownership structure of the Bethlehem Steel land and structures

(The Present)
When the Poarch Band of Creek Indians purchased the then-Sands Casino in 2019, making it Wind Creek Bethlehem, they also purchased most of the un-redeveloped portions of SteelStacks. Through Wind Creek, PCI owns the blast furnaces, No 2. Machine Shop, and the other ruins.

Future plans
ArtsQuest has had plans since (2019?) to turn the former Bethlehem Steel Turn and Grind Shop into an event venue. The organization began raising funds for the project (when?), with the goal of (starting/finishing when?)

Ahead of the purchase, Wind Creek floated plans for a water park in machine shop #2, plans which they have not mentioned in many years.

Bass pro shop for Machine No 2 https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/2013/08/bass_pro_shops_second_hotel_ey.html

ArtsQuest Center
used for ArtsQuest programming

Univest Public Media Center
The headquarters and studios of PBS39 and Lehigh Valley Public Media

Levitt Pavillion
Mostly a concert venue

Hoover-Mason Trestle
a linear park made from the old ore train tracks along the base of the blast furnaces

Bethlehem Visitors Center
Formerly the Bethlehem Steel stockhouse, it is now a visitors center and does what exactly?

other remaining Bethlehem Steel structures
ruins, crane

Awards
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 * The ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks
 * Cultural Building
 * ArchDaily Building of the Year
 * Levitt Pavilion at SteelStacks
 * n/a
 * Metal Architecture Judges Design Award
 * Won
 * The ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks
 * n/a
 * American Institute of Architects, Pennsylvania Silver Medal
 * Won
 * The silver medal is the group's highest honor.
 * The ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks
 * Urban Transformation
 * Architizer A+ Awards
 * Jury Winner
 * Bethlehem Steel Stock House
 * n/a
 * Preservation Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award
 * Won
 * The building, the oldest on the Bethlehem Steel campus, is now the Bethlehem Visitor Center.
 * The ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks
 * n/a
 * American-Architects.com Building of the Year
 * SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus
 * n/a
 * Urban Land Institute Global Award for Excellence
 * Won
 * Levitt Pavillion SteelStacks
 * Category 3: A small project construction, object, work of environmental art, or architectural design less than 5,000 square feet constructed by the architect.
 * American Institute of Architects Small Project Award
 * Won
 * Category 3 projects are generally those which cost more than $1.5 million to construct.
 * Hoover-Mason Trestle
 * Landscape/Urban Development
 * Engineering News-Record Best of the Best Projects
 * Won
 * SteelStacks Campus
 * Architectural Lighting, Outdoor
 * The Architect's Newspaper Best of Design Award
 * Won
 * Hoover-Mason Trestle
 * Websites and Mobile Sites, Cultural Institutions
 * Webby Award
 * Link to nominated work
 * Link to nominated work
 * SteelStacks Campus
 * Outdoor Lighting Design
 * Illuminating Engineering Society Award of Distinction
 * Won
 * Hoover-Mason Trestle
 * Landscape and Planning - Public Park
 * Architizer A+ Awards
 * Hoover-Mason Trestle
 * n/a
 * Urban Land Institute Philadelphia Willard G. “Bill” Rouse III Award for Excellence
 * Won
 * SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus
 * n/a
 * Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence Gold Medal
 * Won
 * SteelStacks Campus
 * n/a
 * Illuminating Engineering Society, New York City Section Lumen Award of Merit
 * Won
 * SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus
 * General Design
 * American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award
 * Won