(Read the remarks, as prepared for delivery, by LVEDC President & CEO Don Cunningham to a standing-room only audience of about 1,000 at LVEDC’s Annual Meeting on March 17 at ArtsQuest Center in Bethlehem.)
Thank you all for being here – and making this the largest and most successful LVEDC Annual Meeting in our 31-year history. On this St. Patrick’s Day, we welcome old friends and new. We remember our past, prepare for our future, and celebrate the journey leading us from one to the other. 
You’ve heard me say often that LVEDC is a large coalition of the willing. It’s all of you - everyone who plays a role in growing our economy, improving our community, or just doing your best to make things a little better than you found them. It’s private sector and public. Education and non-profits. Cities and townships. Large employers and small. Those new to the community, and those here for generations.
The Lehigh Valley’s economic renaissance is no longer a secret. For decades we worked below the radar, toiling in the shadows. When the steel mills went silent, the textile factories moved out, and manufacturing jobs declined, we went to work. We never whined or complained. We pivoted. City by city, community by community, we redeveloped our vacant industrial sites, made our downtowns destinations for visitors and residents, built new roads and bridges, preserved farmland, and planned new industrial centers, recruited new employers, incubated our own, and worked to retain and grow those already here.
Victory truly has a thousand fathers and mothers. And many who laid the early groundwork have passed on. It’s upon their shoulders we stand. It takes a couple of decades and generations to write a complete story of success.
Today, we welcome new friends, particularly those from Eli Lilly and Company. You’ll soon hear from senior executive Dan VonDielingen.
Lilly’s development of a new $3.5 billion pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Upper Macungie Township is the largest economic development project in Lehigh Valley history. It’s the largest life sciences development in Pennsylvania history.
Governor Shapiro will be here before this meeting ends - his second appearance in 4 years. He’s given the Lehigh Valley unprecedented attention and financial support. He’s helped us create our next chapter as a life sciences center.
We are grateful to both Lilly and the state. Big wins are fabulous. We’re also grateful to many others, to all of you. To everyone who’s adding a piece every day – no matter how big or small – to solve a puzzle many thought impossible. We offer our collective thanks to:
Those making our cities and downtowns attractive, safe, and great places to live and visit with excellent restaurants, arts and culture, and community events and festivals.
The hospital networks and higher education institutions that attract and retain residents and young people seeking a place to grow and learn.
The career and technical schools and community colleges training advanced manufacturing and life sciences workers and those in the trades.
The employers who choose to stay and grow here – and those making it a new home.
The elected officials who put parties and parochialism aside to deliver what’s needed to make a region better. People like State Rep. Jeanne McNeill, who this year delivered $100,000 in state funds to support LVEDC’s Education & Talent Supply work – an award-winning initiative to connect businesses to educators and to the talent needed by employers.
Thank you to all of you that invest in this coalition with your money, your time and your talent. We have a unique public-private coalition – started and led by private sector leaders three decades ago – that reaches across county and municipal lines, industries and sectors to develop regional economic strategy and implement it.
To the fabulous LVEDC Board who guides it all. And our little but mighty LVEDC staff of 15 people, who combine intelligence, hard work and a commitment to mission like I’ve never seen. A special thanks today to Nicole Mertz, our VP of Marketing, who manages this event, its publications and a million moving parts. Journalism’s loss has been our gain.
This Lehigh Valley coalition of community is our secret sauce. You’re the reason that things happen here that don’t happen elsewhere.
As Steve Hoff announced, in 2025, the Lehigh Valley was the #1 mid-size market in the U.S. for economic development. We’ve been in the top ten for a decade. This is our second first in three years. The region’s GDP now tops $57 billion, more than two states.
Manufacturing is once again our largest sector with $9 billion in annual output by more than 700 manufacturers producing everything from consumer products, brand name food and beverages, medical devices, construction trucks, military hardware – and soon high-quality medicines to the world.
Made in Lehigh Valley is our brand. We make things here. Manufacturing is 16 percent of the economy, compared to11 percent in the U.S. Manufacturing jobs have grown at three times the U.S. rate – and that’s before Lilly hires 850 new workers with an average salary of $100,000 per year.
The region has the most total jobs in its history with 343,975 and its largest population with 708,644 people living in Lehigh and Northampton counties. Our population of young people – ages 18-34 – has grown at twice the rate of the U.S. since 2020. How?
We welcome newcomers. Both counties have been hotspots for migration and immigration. People are coming here. Lehigh is in the top five percent of U.S counties for international migration, Northampton in the top five percent for domestic. Last year, Northampton led all of Pennsylvania’s counties in growth of young people.
The most important metrics, however, are what it means for our people. Median household income here exceeds that of the state and nation and has grown by more than $17,000 in the last five years, outpacing inflation. The Lehigh Valley poverty rate – although ideally zero percent – is lower than the state and nation and has not grown since 2010.
While celebrating success is important, it’s equally important to recognize the new challenges that it creates. Housing is harder to find, and less affordable. Working parents struggle to pay for and find high-quality childcare. Like every growing market in the U.S., availability and affordability are of concern. Young people today encounter obstacles and financial challenges not known to their parents and grandparents.
Land, water and energy resources are more limited while new houses and higher-value economic growth are needed. And there are more and more hurdles for developers to deliver them. That’s why LVEDC’s new three-year strategic plan goes beyond job-creation to focus on targeting high-value development and building regional coalitions to address challenges of scarcity or high costs for our workers and residents.
We’ve conquered challenges before. When others said we couldn’t, we did. The collective work of the last 25 years has made the Lehigh Valley a middle America success story. A comeback kid. The underdog, up from the ashes.
Our mission is lofty but simple. It’s for everyone to have a good paying job in a safe community with quality schools, health care, and neighborhoods regardless of their skills or socioeconomic status. A good job is still the best pathway to a good life. From the Ph.D. to the picker and the packer, there’s dignity – and importance – in all work.
The region’s focus today must be different than yesterday. That’s the way it should be. Solving one set of problems and challenges creates a new set.
We’re not the same Lehigh Valley as when these blast furnaces were firing. Change is life’s constant. The key is to bend it to the good.
And if we learned anything in this economic renaissance, we’ve learned the power of working together, to embrace the new while honoring the old. We are a place infused with the new – new residents, new companies, and new leaders - young and ambitious, using new technologies, and with a new set of dreams and goals.
I once fit that description. But even with some gray in my hair, and a little rust on the chassis, I dream new dreams for the Lehigh Valley. We’ve entered a new era. We welcome Lilly and look forward to making medicines for the world.
The Lehigh Valley meets its challenges better than others. We work together, involve everyone, tune out the national noise, and realize there’s more strength in unity than division. So, let’s keep our collective heads down, our work ethic up, welcome the new, honor those who’ve been around, and stay committed to leaving things better than what we found. That’s the Lehigh Valley way – two counties, 62 communities, 17 school districts but one Valley. That’s what makes us different. That’s what Made in Lehigh Valley means.
Soon there will be a new brand under that Made in Lehigh Valley banner.
Eli Lilly and Company has been around for 150 years. This year they break ground on a plant here in the Lehigh Valley, one of several new plants being built through its commitment to make product in the USA. The senior executive assigned to get those facilities built is Dan VonDielingen, Lilly’s Senior VP of Global Parenteral Networking Expansion.
I had dinner with Dan last night. He’s as nice as he is smart. We are honored that he traveled in yesterday from Indianapolis, overcoming hurricane warnings and crazy weather, to be with us. He’s here with John Russo and Tim Lyden of Lilly. We thank them for making the Lehigh Valley part of Lilly’s global footprint. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm Lehigh Valley welcome to Dan.
(Photos by Marco Calderon Photography)