When one door closes, another opens – or in the case of closed factories and manufacturing plants in the Philadelphia area, when one door closes, it reopens with new purpose.

Case in point  is the former training facility Merck built in Horsham to accommodate 1,500 employees in 1999. It’s been vacant since 2016 when Merck consolidated facilities. So Mark Nicoletti and his family-owned Philadelphia Suburban Development Corp. made use of the vacancy and repurposed the campus as The Pinnacle, writes Joseph N. DiStefano in philly,com.

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The Pinnacle is now home, through leasing, to Sicom Systems, a fast food-software firm that’s backed by Ira Lubert’s LLR Partners.

“Merck acquired many hundreds of thousands of square feet in excess of their needs. Little by little, they’re selling,” Nicoletti told philly.com. “This building was maintained very well, but it was not modernized.”

The transformation was not without challenges. One hurdle was releasing the building from Merck’s regional utility grid and adding all new phone, data and Internet connectivity systems.

And for Joe Mirabile, CEO of United States Seating Corp., moving from Conshohocken to the former West Pharmaceuticals Corp. in Exton, was worth the expense and effort.

“I was amazed once we started removing the ceilings,” Mirabile told philly.com. “This building had really strong bones. A well-poured concrete foundation so it could handle the weight of our machines. And it’s on a 35-acres site, where we can start work on another 200,000-square-foot space,” which he hopes to finish a year from now.

To read the complete story, click here.

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