Erie Insurance to announce building plans [Erie Times-News, Pa.]

June 30--Erie Insurance Group over the past several years has been quiet about its specific plans for property it has steadily purchased on Erie's lower east side.

That reticence will go away on Monday.

Erie Insurance has scheduled a 1 p.m. news conference to detail development of some of the land, including parcels near its corporate headquarters at East Sixth and French streets, across from Perry Square.

Officials at the Fortune 500 company declined to discuss the plans publicly before the news conference. Officials previously said Erie Insurance was working on a long-range plan.

"Erie is our namesake, and it's been our home since 1925. We're committed to this community and to improving the city we share," Erie Insurance's chief executive, Terrence Cavanaugh, said in 2012.

"We're studying how to best use that space and other parts of our campus to provide the right mix of office and meeting rooms, training facilities, as well as amenities like parking, cafeterias and green space. It's important to us to be a great insurer, a great employer and a great corporate citizen."

Erie Insurance has said it needs more office space and parking spots for the 2,402 employees at its corporate headquarters, part of its overall workforce of 4,500. The company in October expects to finish a 1,000-space parking garage -- the largest in Erie -- on 2 acres between East Seventh and East Eighth streets and French and Holland streets.

Since early 2011, Erie Insurance has purchased more than 30 houses, vacant lots and other parcels on the lower east side. It now owns a total of 125 parcels in the city, including the land that encompasses the corporate headquarters.

One of Erie Insurance's biggest buys came in January, when it paid $330,000 for the former Pennsylvania National Guard Armory, at Parade and East Sixth streets.

And in January 2012, Erie Insurance bought the Achievement Center's building at 101 E. Sixth St., across the street from Erie Insurance's corporate headquarters, for $1.5 million. That building, originally known as the C.F. Adams Building, housed Erie Insurance offices from 1938 to 1956.

Following some of its other purchases, Erie Insurance tore down several houses, but it also developed two old homes at East Fifth and Parade streets into office space for local businesses.

Erie Insurance for years has worked with the nonprofit Bayfront East Side Taskforce, or B.E.S.T., to develop new and affordable housing on the lower east side, particularly in the area around Parade Street.

ED PALATTELLA can be reached at 870-1813 or by e-mail. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNpalattella.

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