Dec 27, 2015 3 min read

In one of the largest single business transactions in Washington County’s history, The Meadows Racetrack & Casino was sold in mid-December for $440 million to Wyomissing-based Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc.

The purchase price more than doubled what the venue’s current owner, Las Vegas-based Cannery Casino Resorts, paid when it purchased the legacy harness-racing track property for $200 million in 2004 from Magna Entertainment Corp.

But when the deal with GLPI closes sometime in the second half of 2016 – assuming approvals from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board and the state Harness Racing Commission – CCR will leave a legacy of its own at the North Strabane Township site, where it is now one of the county’s largest employers.

In the eight years since CCR began offering gaming at the site, it has become one of the largest casinos on the East Coast. Besides slots and table games, The Meadows added a summer concert series of national musical acts, a 24-lane bowling alley and 11 casual and upscale restaurants as well as improvements to the racetrack. grandstands and paddocks.

Its growing presence, along with the addition of its neighbor, Tanger Outlets, created a hospitality center along the Racetrack Road corridor. The resulting commercial landscape has been represented by the construction of more than 1,000 hotel rooms over the past several years, as well as the ongoing construction of the “Street at the Meadows” mixed-use residential and retail development.

In July, Mylan, the largest maker of generic drugs in the U.S., which two years ago opened a state-of-the-art corporate headquarters in Southpointe II, completed an inversion following its takeover of some units of Abbott Laboratories, moving its headquarters to the Netherlands. An inversion is when an American corporation combines with a company headquartered in a country with a lower corporate tax rate, saving potentially millions each year in U.S. taxes. The deal is expected to lower Mylan’s tax rate to about 20 percent to 21 percent in the first full year and to the high teens after that.

While Mylan N.V. is keeping its administrative base in Southpointe, its deal to incorporate in the Netherlands follows a path explored by several other U.S. drugmakers this year.

More than four months have passed since Allegheny Technologies Inc. locked out about 2,200 union employees at 12 plants – including an estimated 220 at the Allegheny Ludlum plate mill in Canton Township. Yet no end is in sight.

An end to unemployment benefits is, however: late February.

The affected workers, members of the United Steelworkers, were locked out Aug. 15 while working under terms of a contract that expired June 30. Negotiations with Pittsburgh-based ATI continued to Aug. 6, when the company said it made its “last, best and final” offer.

ATI gave the union an Aug. 10 deadline to consider the offer and present it for vote – a deadline some USW members contended was too soon to get a complete vote.

Then the lockout hit, with ATI continuing to operate the facilities with salaried and nonunion employees and temporary professional staff. There have been no negotiations since.

In the latest development, the National Labor Relations Board in Pittsburgh told the USW it will issue a complaint alleging that the lockout is illegal.