Matthew Tuerk

It's one of those like head scratchers when you're talking about a region's industrial output to say like, we make like an element, like an elemental element, like the lowest atomic scale.

It's hard to describe like how that happens, but that was founded in Allentown.

Actually, it was founded in Tennessee and moved to Allentown in the 50s.

But a lot of that production was still occurring.

The, the,

the kind of civic leaders of the time in the early 90s, is they could foresee the end of Bethlehem Steel when it was acquired.

I think it was acquired by ArcelorMittal, but they could see the end in sight.

And so they made a conscious effort to diversify, working with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to stand up some tech-led economic development, which it was successful in a few places.

The biggest success in attracting investment or the biggest kind of economic development story for the region was in 2006 when the region convinced Olympus, which is the manufacturer of surgical devices, to relocate its North American headquarters.

They were out in suburban Bethlehem.

But that's been the character, right?

It's a very diversified economy.

Today, it's still about 17% of the jobs are manufacturing jobs.

So it's much higher than many other parts of the country.

And it's held pretty steady.

That was great.

Yeah.

So I started working for the Economic Development Corporation in 2008, and we had the manufacturing incubator.

It's called the Bridgeworks, the manufacturing incubator that was in place at that time.

It was trying to pivot away from manufacturing when I got there.