MIDDLETOWN, PA-Pratt & Whitney Amercon Inc. has signed a long-term lease for 70,232 sf at 181 Fulling Mill Rd. It will convert warehouse space in the building to a manufacturing facility for commercial and military jet engine airplane parts.

The aggregate value of the lease is approximately $3 million, according to Joe McDermott, SVP with CB Richard Ellis, who represented the building owner, the New York City-based Rreef North America. Rreef is a member of the Deutsch Bank Group. Brokers at Stamford, CT-based USI Real Estate Services Inc. represented Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp., which is based in East Hartford, CT.

McDermott tells GlobeSt.com that this agreement takes occupancy in the approximately 250,000-sf building to 100%. Other tenants are Unidare and TVC Communications. "Pratt & Whitney is relocating from a smaller facility in Harrisburg that wasn't large enough to accommodate new manufacturing contracts."

Mike Pcholinski, VP for Pratt & Whitney's turbine airfoil business, says the company will move into the new location this summer with approximately 135 employees. In a statement, he says the new facility will reduce operating costs and streamline production processes.

According to a first-quarter 2006 report from the Harrisburg office of CBRE, the average asking lease rate for industrial space in Dauphine County is $3.99 per sf. The industrial vacancy in the county is 6.7%.