By Rodger Morrow, Editor & Publisher, Beaver County Business
Listen to a podcast discussion about this article.
The Thing About Beaver County
The thing about Beaver County is that most of us arrived by accident and stayed on purpose. Jack Manning just happens to be unusually honest about that.
In a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Business Times, Manning traces his path here to the sort of corporate sentence that once brought half the county’s population across state lines: a transfer. He and his wife landed here 25 years ago, courtesy of a petrochemical shuffle from Chesapeake, Virginia, to Moon Township. The plan, presumably, was to do the job, keep the boxes handy, and move on when the next memo arrived.
Instead, Beaver County did what it does best. It ambushed him with rivers, farms, parks, legacy towns, and that stubborn Main Street sense of community that refuses to die even when the mall is having a bad decade. He stayed. Worse yet—for a man who once had the sense to work in human resources—he got involved.
Manning has since served as president and executive director of the Beaver County Chamber of Commerce, a trustee of the Community College of Beaver County, and now finds himself deep into a second four-year term as county commissioner, sitting on enough boards to require a color-coded calendar. This is what passes for retirement here.
What’s Changed Since 2000
Ask him what’s changed since 2000, and he points first to what you can see: riverfronts cleaned up, brownfields reborn, downtowns remembering they exist. The Ohio River corridor—from Aliquippa through Rochester to Midland—has quietly undergone a civic glow-up that would have seemed fanciful back when “redevelopment” meant a fresh coat of paint on a condemned sign.
But the more interesting shift, he says, is invisible: the return of a can-do attitude and something like pride. This is Beaver County, so it’s a modest pride. No one is spiking the football. We’re just no longer apologizing for the stadium.
The Shell Plant
Then there’s the Shell plant—always the Shell plant. Manning admits his bias, having spent 35 years in petrochemicals, including time with Shell itself. But he’s also right. Shell didn’t just build a cracker plant; it built the county’s marketing department.
The largest construction project in Pennsylvania history didn’t whisper its way into existence. It announced Beaver County to the world, kept paychecks flowing through the pandemic, and—Manning notes with the precision of a man who has seen retail spreadsheets—probably saved the Beaver Valley Mall from becoming a cautionary tale with a food court.
Diversification and New Growth
What excites him now is not a single shiny object but a deliberate refusal to put all our eggs in one basket—while acknowledging that the basket, historically, has been very good to us.
Advanced manufacturing and energy remain the backbone: MEPPI’s switchgear facility near the turnpike, Tenaris expanding steel capacity in Koppel, power projects in Shippingport. Around the edges, technology, tourism, and health care are elbowing their way into the picture.
Data centers—those humming, windowless cathedrals of the digital age—are circling. Aligned’s eye-popping proposal at the former Bruce Mansfield site. Fezzik Energy’s ambitions in Aliquippa and Midland. Add in hotel expansion, PA250, and the NFL Draft, and suddenly Beaver County sounds like a place people plan trips to, not just pass through on the way to somewhere else.
Energy as the Through-Line
Energy, of course, remains the through-line. Manning is cautiously bullish on Meta’s investment tied to Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station, operated by Vistra.
Nuclear power, once the awkward uncle at the energy dinner table, is being invited back into polite company by tech firms with insatiable appetites for electrons. The signal is clear enough: serious companies are placing serious bets on Beaver County.
If all of this sounds a little too upbeat for our taste, relax. Manning is still a Beaver Countian. He talks about diversification with the practiced calm of someone who knows markets turn, projects stall, and optimism should never outrun infrastructure.
Choosing to Stay
You’ll have a chance to hear more from him—and ask the kind of pointed questions Beaver Countians excel at—at a February 24 event at the Fez. It’s the sort of venue that perfectly suits the moment: familiar, unpretentious, and quietly doing its job while bigger things are discussed around folding tables.
Jack Manning came here on a transfer. Beaver County transferred him right back—into civic duty, long meetings, and the peculiar satisfaction of watching a place you chose decide, finally, to choose itself.
