FedEx is closing a longtime State College area shipping center as part of a company-wide overhaul of its delivery network.
The facility at 2175 Fox Hill Road in Benner Township, on State College Regional Airport grounds, will close May 4, a FedEx spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.
Employees were notified several months in advance and some have been offered other roles within the company, the spokesperson wrote in a statement to StateCollege.com. Because they have several options and the closure is still two months away, the company could not yet provide details on the number of employees impacted.
“These decisions are never taken lightly and reflect our commitment to supporting affected employees – through job placement assistance, relocation aid, or severance, as applicable – while transforming our network and continuing to provide an outstanding experience for our customers,” the spokesperson wrote.
For customers who traditionally used the Fox Hill Road location for package drop-off, the FedEx Office Print and Ship Center at 1894 N. Atherton St. will remain open.
The Fox Hill Road facility is part of the airfield property currently owned by Penn State and has been leased to FedEx since the 1990s. A pending deal to transfer full ownership of the entire airport property from the university to the Centre County Airport Authority, which owns and operates the commercial terminal, is awaiting Federal Aviation Administration approval, but for now the FedEx facility remains under Penn State ownership.
A Penn State spokesperson said the university has not received formal notice from FedEx of its intent to terminate the lease agreement.
Ralph Stewart, executive director of the Centre County Airport Authority, said he believes that if FedEx terminates the lease Penn State will look to fill the vacancy, but if it remains empty when the ownership transfer is completed, the authority will do the same.
“We want to fill any vacant space we have, so it is on the radar to do that,” Stewart said. “If by the time the transfer happens and it’s still vacant, if we don’t have a tenant or Penn State doesn’t have a tenant,, we will move to fill that vacancy. It’s a leased arrangement. We have other we have hangars with some vacancies, but we look to fill any vacant property space.”
It was not immediately clear if FedEx would also curtail all of its cargo flights to the airport. One apron at the airport has been used exclusively by FedEx cargo flights as part of its Fox Hill Road operations.
A FedEx spokesperson did not respond to a question about the flights.
“We’re anticipating that being affected. We’re not sure if it’s 100% affected,” said Stewart, who deferred the question to Penn State.
The Fox Hill Road facility closure is part of FedEx’s previously announced Network 2.0 project, a multi-year “network transformation” begun in 2022. The project is consolidating the FedEx network with the goal of streamlining package pickups and deliveries, improving speed and service through decreased hand-offs and optimized logistics and integration of standardized technology systems.
The company is also closing a shipping center in Duncansville in May.
