High-tech workers, manufacturing legacy helped Lehigh Valley win ‘gauntlet’ for $3.5B Lilly plant

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Lehigh Valley officials and business executives celebrated a record 2025 this week at ArtsQuest Center, where Gov. Josh Shapiro joined their victory lap after helping to secure the largest investment in local history.

The region posted its highest-ever job total in 2025 — almost 344,000 — and a gross domestic product larger than two states: Wyoming and Vermont, according to Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation.

Its manufacturing sector is robust and growing at three times the national average, while its median income is higher — and its poverty rate lower — than the same figures across the state and the country, LVEDC Chief Executive Officer Don Cunningham said at the organization’s annual meeting.

And the Lehigh Valley was named as the No. 1 mid-sized market for economic development by Site Selection Magazine.

But the region topped all that early in 2026 by securing what is set to be its largest-ever economic project.

Eli Lilly & Company announced in late January that it will invest $3.5 billion to build a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Upper Macungie Township.

That commitment also is the largest by a pharmaceutical company in Pennsylvania’s history.

Why the Lehigh Valley?

Emmy-winning former PBS39 host Grover Silcox moderated a panel discussion that drew back the curtains on Lilly’s decision to set up shop in the Lehigh Valley.

And the long process that made the region an option.

Jay Biggins, an executive for nation-leading site-selection company Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co., said his team and Lilly executives analyzed “hundreds of variables” to whittle down a list of about 300 applications.

“We’ve never seen a project like this one,” Bigging said, calling the selection process “a gauntlet.”

Lilly chose to open its next plant in the Lehigh Valley because the region has a long manufacturing history and offers access to a highly skilled workforce, according to Dan VonDielingen, a senior vice president for Lilly.

The Fortune 100 company plans to hire most of its new employees locally, and executives are working with Lehigh Carbon Community College to develop a high-tech lab and curriculum to prepare students for jobs in the facility.

Local and state leaders also offered Lilly executives confidence that they can help the company meet its ambitious timelines, VonDielingen said.

Lilly, the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world, hopes to break ground on its complex covering almost a million square feet near the eastern intersection of Old U.S. 22 and Haaf Road.

The construction project will create about 2,000 jobs. The facility will employ about 850 once it’s operating at full capacity in 2031, VonDielingen said Tuesday.

The Upper Macungie plant is set to produce Lilly’s best-selling obesity drug, Zepbound, and a new class of similar medications, once approved.

Project fast-tracked

Ben Kirshner, the state’s first chief transformation and opportunity officer, credited Pennsylvania’s “first in the nation” permitting fast-track program for helping draw Lilly’s attention.

Kirshner said he and dozens of officials and company executives met twice a week for about 18 months to iron out countless logistical and regulatory details.

He credited LVEDC for playing “such a crucial role” by ensuring regional cooperation.

That panel discussion, and a short Lehigh Valley trivia game, set the stage for Shapiro’s second LVEDC annual-meeting appearance in the past three years.

Lilly’s decision to invest billions in Upper Macungie “validates the work” that LVEDC has “been doing for years” to regain the region’s status as a manufacturing hub, the governor said.

The Lehigh Valley “has proven itself time and time again over the years as a major player when it comes to economic development, a major driver of our economy in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said, with the former Bethlehem Steel campus behind him.

“Today, the Lehigh Valley stands as a model for communities across Pennsylvania, really across the country, to be able to follow.”

He paid tribute to Kirshner for helping to develop a regulatory-approval system that is “slashing wait times” and “guarantees speed” so developers with large projects can reliably lay out and meet timelines.

“Our permitting process was just simply too damn slow,” Shapiro said.

Landing Lilly’s $3.5 billion plant shows Pennsylvania's strategic plan “is working,” the governor said.

“We're moving at the speed of business," he said. "And as a result of all of that, Pennsylvania is on the rise, and the Lehigh Valley is leading the way.”