Northeastern Pennsylvania's Industrial Market Outlook (Q4 '25 - Q1 '26) - Focus on I-81 & I-476 Corridor

Economics and Workforce

Nationally, the industrial sector spent 2025 working through the supply glut created by the 2021 to 2023 construction boom. Vacancy peaked near (7.5%) in the third quarter, the highest level in more than a decade, before easing to roughly (7.0%) in the first quarter of 2026 as new construction completions fell sharply, down (27%) year over year to their lowest quarterly total since mid-2017.

Net absorption of about 40 million square feet in the first quarter of 2026 was up (52%) year over year, the strongest first-quarter showing since 2023, and the national average industrial asking rent rose to ($10.20) per square foot, suggesting the market is finally digesting several years of oversupply rather than continuing to deteriorate.

Pennsylvania's I-81 / I-78 industrial corridor, the six-submarket footprint Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania tracks quarterly across more than 674 million square feet of inventory, followed a similar but more pronounced pattern. Regionwide vacancy ended 2025 at (8.66%), down from a mid-year peak of (9.50%). Northeastern Pennsylvania specifically went through a sharp first-quarter reset in early 2025 before rebounding through the back half of the year, closing 2025 back near what Lee & Associates calls structural vacancy levels and showing renewed development momentum in the fourth quarter. The submarket measured (8.07%) vacancy as of the third quarter, about a point above the national average.

Heading into 2026, NEPA was a regional standout, posting roughly 1.3 million square feet of positive net absorption in the first quarter even as the neighboring Lehigh Valley and Central Pennsylvania submarkets posted negative absorption for the same period.

Closer to home, Luzerne County's labor market runs a bit tighter than both the state and the nation, with unemployment at (5.0%) in December 2025 against Pennsylvania's (4.2%) and the national rate of (4.4%) that same month. More telling for industrial demand is the county's employment mix; transportation and warehousing accounts for (13.9%) of all county jobs, a location quotient of 2.40, meaning the sector employs county residents at well over double the rate seen statewide, and Manufacturing adds another (12.3%), a location quotient of 1.31. Four of the county's ten largest employers, Amazon.com Services, the TJ Maxx Distribution Center, Chewy, and Lowe's Home Centers, operate large-scale distribution or fulfillment facilities. Online job postings in the county rose (37.2%) year over year in December 2025, nearly double the statewide growth rate of (19.4%), a forward-looking signal of continued hiring demand from the area's logistics and manufacturing base.

Industrial Market Overview, I-81 / I-476 Corridor

The structural appeal of Pittston and the broader NEPA submarket continues to be cost. Average Class A industrial asking rents in the region ran about ($7.55) per square foot in the fourth quarter of 2025, against a national average of ($10.20) per square foot and roughly ($12.83) in Greater Philadelphia and ($17.63) in Northern New Jersey. On a 200,000 square foot building, the gap to Northern New Jersey alone represents more than ($2 million) a year in occupancy cost, which is the core reason 3PLs, food and beverage manufacturers, and e-commerce tenants priced out of the Philadelphia and New York and New Jersey gateway markets keep looking up the I-81 and I-78 corridors.

On the supply side, the broader six-submarket Eastern Pennsylvania region ended 2025 with about 20.7 million square feet under construction. Lee & Associates specifically called out Northeastern Pennsylvania and Central Pennsylvania as the submarkets where new construction starts were concentrated in the fourth quarter, even as several other submarkets pulled back. That is a useful talking point with developers or institutional buyers: NEPA is one of the few corridors where ground kept breaking through the broader regional slowdown.

Local Spotlight: CenterPoint Commerce and Trade Park

The dominant industrial address in the immediate Pittston market is CenterPoint Commerce and Trade Park, developed in phases by Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services since 2005 across Pittston Township and Jenkins Township. The park sits directly off I-81 Exit 175 and I-476 Exit 115, falls within a LERTA zone offering a 10-year real estate tax abatement on improvements, and draws on a labor pool of more than 470,000 people within 20 miles. Two of the three Pittston-area leases in this report's transaction table, Eastroc Beverage Group and Harrington Process Solutions, both landed here within the past 12 months, a useful sign that large-block space continues to lease up quickly even after a tenant failure like Joriki's 2024 bankruptcy.

Top Employers, Luzerne County

Ranked by employment, per the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Exact headcounts are not published at the employer level.

Recent Lease Activity, Greater Pittston and CenterPoint

Eastroc, a Shenzhen-based beverage manufacturer, took the 403,000 square foot building vacated by Joriki's 2024 bankruptcy and rehired roughly the same headcount. Harrington Process Solutions, a Chino, California-based fluid-handling distributor, opened its 91st U.S. distribution center here in March 2026, brokered by Mericle alongside Fischer and Company and Cushman & Wakefield on the tenant side, its first Northeast facility. FulfillPlus, a national 3PL with existing centers in Houston and Fremont, picked Mid Valley Industrial Park in Olyphant, in Lackawanna County just north of the immediate Pittston submarket, for its third U.S. fulfillment center and expects to hire 25 to 40 people initially.

Smaller-Scale Activity Outside the Major Business Parks

Not every deal in this submarket runs through a 400,000 square foot Mericle building. Smaller, owner-user, and adaptive-reuse transactions make up a meaningful share of NEPA industrial activity and tend to be financed through the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority (PIDA) and the NEPA Alliance rather than tracked by the major brokerage research platforms, which makes them easy to miss in a CoStar-only view of the market.

Premier Brands of America acquired the former Scranton Times-Tribune printing facility at 45 Commerce Drive in Scott Township, Lackawanna County, for its first Pennsylvania manufacturing plant, a ($15 million) investment creating 58 new jobs, backed by a ($3.6 million) PIDA loan and announced in April 2026.

Beneath that single example sits a steadier current of small-business industrial financing across the region; in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, the NEPA Alliance's Business Finance Center closed 18 SBA (504) loans totaling ($17.25 million), leveraging ($24.7 million) in total investment region-wide. That volume of activity does not show up in a submarket vacancy grid, but it is the kind of owner-user purchase and small expansion activity that fills out a broker's pipeline between the headline park leases.

Construction and Investment Activity, NEPA / I-81 Corridor

Notably absent: arm's-length building sales, meaning price, price per square foot, and cap rate, for the immediate Pittston submarket. Unlike South Central Pennsylvania's more liquid investment sales market, most Class A product in Greater Pittston is built and held long-term by private developers, chiefly Mericle, rather than traded, so quarter-over-quarter sale comps are thin even on CoStar. Readers with direct CoStar or brokerage MLS access can supplement this picture with a fuller comp set.

Methodology and Sources

This report compiles data from publicly available industry, government, and trade press sources rather than a single proprietary database. Vacancy, rent, and absorption figures for the Northeastern Pennsylvania submarket come from Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania's quarterly Industrial Intel report, the only regularly published source that tracks NEPA as a distinct submarket within the broader Eastern Pennsylvania industrial market. National benchmark figures used for comparison come from Cushman & Wakefield's U.S. Industrial MarketBeat and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Transaction detail comes from developer and economic development press releases, cross-checked against independent news coverage where available.

• Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania, Q3 2025 and Q4 2025 Eastern Pennsylvania Industrial Intel market report releases
• Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services, press releases on the Eastroc Beverage Group, Harrington Process Solutions, and FulfillPlus leases, and on CrossRoads East Business Park construction and grant activity (Jan 2025 to Mar 2026)
• Penn's Northeast, regional economic development news coverage corroborating the Harrington Process Solutions opening
• PA Department of Community and Economic Development and NEPA Alliance, Premier Brands of America PIDA loan announcement (Apr 2026) and NEPA Alliance Annual Report (FY2025)
• Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Center for Workforce Information and Analysis, Luzerne County Profile (data through December 2025)
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, national unemployment data (December 2025) and Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
• Cushman & Wakefield, U.S. Industrial MarketBeat, Q1 2026
• CoStar Group, Q3 2025 national industrial vacancy commentary