MERCER COUNTY Authority will help company, agency

American Cap plans to expand its Wheatland operation, and Community Counseling Center wants to expand its services.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- The Mercer County Industrial Development Authority has agreed to lend its tax-free financing status to projects expanding a private industrial company and a social service agency.
The approval Friday allows the projects to tap state industrial revenue bonds by using the authority as a financing agency.
Moroco Family Limited Partnership, which owns the building at 13 Church St., Wheatland, where American Cap Co. Inc. is located, is asking for $3,325,000 in assistance on a $3,341,625 project.
The company wants to improve and expand its building so American Cap can expand its operations. The project also includes the refinancing of $1.6 million in an earlier industrial revenue bond project for Moroco Family Limited Partnership, also secured through the authority.
Further, the project involves the purchase of a new hydraulic press to be used in the manufacture of acetylene gas cylinders.
American Cap manufactures cylinder accessories for the industrial gas, specialty gas and welding supply industries as well as acetylene cylinders and liquid propane tanks for the specialty gas market.
More jobs
The company has more than 80 employees now and this expansion will add 15 jobs over three years.
The social service agency getting help is Community Counseling Center of Mercer County. It needs $500,000 in authority assistance on a $607,500 project to build a 7,300-square-foot facility for psychiatric rehabilitation and related services on land it owns at 133 S. Irvine Ave., Sharon.
Community Counseling is a nonprofit agency that provides outpatient psychiatric services and community residential rehabilitation services.
The two-story project will have psychiatric rehabilitation offices and a client drop-in center on the first floor and five apartments on the second floor to provide transitional housing for clients moving back into the area after being released from state mental hospitals.
Community Counseling has 12 full-time employees and will add two more with this project.
Both the Mercer County Commissioners and the state Department of Community and Economic Development must also approve the financing plans for the projects.