This column, written by LVEDC President & CEO Don Cunningham, originally appeared in The Morning Call and on the newspaper’s website on March 6, 2026.
I’d been dreaming of this day for more than a year. And now I was feeling very strange. An out-of-body sensation was washing over me as I sat in my seat in January at Da Vinci Science Center in downtown Allentown and listened to Eli Lilly and Co. President & CEO Dave Ricks announce his company’s choice of the Lehigh Valley for a $3.5 billion manufacturing plant. 
Behind Ricks was the bright red Lilly logo. Images of company workers and facilities swirled around him on the full-wall video screen that is a unique feature of the science center.
A blur of joy, relief, exhaustion and exhilaration had synthesized into a single sensation that left me feeling as if I was watching myself watch Ricks. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was seated just down from me, next to speak. I was after him. I’d find out later from the Fitbit I wear on my wrist that my heart rate was above 150 beats per minute.
It was both a sensation and day like I’d never had. Fortunately, I calmed my heart and head before I ruined the moment, but the exhilaration continues.
The Lilly project is the largest in Lehigh Valley history: $3.5 billion, 850 jobs with an average salary of $100,000 per year, and 2,000 construction jobs during the next three. It’s the largest life sciences project in Pennsylvania’s history.
It was 18 months in the making, and a decade in the building.
It’s the capstone to the Lehigh Valley’s amazing economic renaissance of the last 20 years.
There’s been nothing comparable since the days of Bethlehem Steel, which grew slowly over a century, when our workers produced the steel for America’s skylines and bridges and the armaments to help win two world wars.
Lilly is the first page of a new chapter — an era of life sciences — in the Lehigh Valley’s proud history of making things in America. Construction will begin this year. The plant should be producing Lilly’s new blockbuster diabetes and weight loss GLP-1 drugs by 2029.
I’m fortunate to lead the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., a large private-public coalition started 30 years during tough economic times by corporate leaders to build a regional strategy and partnership for job creation and economic growth. Among other things, we lead the recruitment of high-value employers, and work to retain and grow existing companies.
Life sciences growth — specifically pharmaceutical manufacturing — has been part of LVEDC’s strategic plan for nearly a decade. The region is like a doughnut hole in the middle of a pharmaceutical belt that bends south from Philadelphia and its suburbs, north to Monroe. We’re home to growing life science companies like B. Braun, Olympus, OraSure, Sharp and Thermo-Fisher. The German company GfM Breman — specializing in the micronization of active ingredients in the pharma supply chain — is building its first U.S. plant on former Bethlehem steel land.
This project is part of Lilly’s admirable investment in making medicines in the U.S. The Lehigh Valley location was competing with 300 other sites, including a few in the Philadelphia market, for one of four new Lilly facilities. In the end, Lilly also chose sites in Texas, Alabama and Virginia, much more common states in recent decades for multi-billion-dollar manufacturing sites.
A dozen or so people with the state and in the region worked quietly behind the scenes in a multi-year process. We racked up thousands of collective staff hours of work with no assurance we’d win.
We had gotten close on a manufacturing plant before, and lost a few major recruitments along the way.
But, unlike in days past, we were not on our own. We had a great friend in Pennsylvania. Shapiro has brought an economic development strategy to put Pennsylvania in play where it didn’t used to be. He hired committed economic development talent with extensive private and national government experience like DCED Secretary Rick Siger and Chief Transformation and Opportunity Officer Ben Kirshner. Kirshner heads a special unit in the Governor’s Office that was created with Shapiro’s first executive order in January 2023. He’s charged with cutting red tape, streamlining permitting and busting up agency silos. And he enjoys doing it.
They developed a 10-year economic strategic plan, passed budgets with new economic development funding, and work on marketing and attraction. Shapiro was the project’s lead messenger and salesman, developing a personal relationship with Ricks via texts and phone calls, as did U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, both working together and sharing notes.
In the Lehigh Valley, LVEDC coordinated an effort with landowner and turkey farmer David Jaindl, and his great team of engineers, lawyers, and staff, Upper Macungie Township led by Manager Bob Ibach, Lehigh Carbon Community College led by President Ann Bieber, PPL Electric Utilities, UGI Gas, LCA water authority, the Parkland School District and Lehigh County.
A critical element is a new life science training center at LCCC, modeled on a training center at Wake Tech in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, near a similar Lilly plant.
It was all critical in the competition to put Lilly in the Valley — along with money. Luckily, the project qualified for $50 million in an existing, but never-before-used, tax credit developed in 2022 to attract mega semiconductor or life science facilities. To that, Shapiro added $25 million in PA Sites funds and a $25 million PA First grant for a $100 million incentive.
It’s an unprecedented amount for any Lehigh Valley project. And it helped to open a new chapter in the region’s history as we add the Made in Lehigh Valley stamp to innovative medicines sold around the world.
(Photos by Marco Calderon Photography and Eli Lilly and Company)