KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette U.S. Rep. Glenn GT Thompson, R-Howard, left, speaks with Qortek CEO Ross Bird, right, during a tour of the companies Linden facility.

Woodward Township’s elementary school building sat empty for years.

“It was a heartache for the township,” said Jeffrey Stroehmann, township supervisor who recently toured the Lycoming County headquarters of QorTek, a high-tech business that produces and tests maritime hardware and technology used by the U.S. Navy.

The business also has a production facility in State College.

The school building in the 5,000 block of U.S. Route 220 sat vacant until QorTek came along, Stroehmann said during the tour with a special guest, U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Howard.

Stroehmann said QorTek started out in someone’s garage.

“Now, I believe, it is a model, and it is a model that they are able to take small facility like this, and provide family-sustaining jobs to young Gen Z-ers, from Penn College to Penn State,” Stroehmann said.

“The concept that I can see as a tech corridor, with this being the last stretch of I-99 that has not been developed fully as a limited access highway,” Stroehmann said. That said, there is coming a day when it will have direct access and that corridor leads from the Pennsylvania College of Technology (also Lycoming College in Williamsport), a huge transportation hub of the Williamsport region to Penn State main campus in State College.

“We all know that transportation is the lifeblood of Pennsylvania’s economy,” Stroehmann said, adding how this is a community that can provide “everything it takes” for a tech company to relocate here.

“We’ve got an excellent reputation, 40 percent of the nation’s population can be reached within eight hours of this location,” he said. “We’ve got rail, recreation, our school systems are still good, a regional airport that we’ve got to get more stimulation to – how else better to do it than to provide tech jobs, tech opportunities for other companies?” he asked.

“We could be the silicon or semi-silicon tech corridor of Pennsylvania,” Stroehmann said, directing his remarks to Thompson and the rest of the QorTek team.

“This is not a pipe dream, not a presentation, this is a model,” Stroehmann said, adding as a supervisor and planner it would be his desire to see that happen and said it could if there were improvements on Route 220 in terms of completing its limited access highway portion, improving township water infrastructure, and providing federal tax incentives for businesses such as creating Keystone Opportunity Zones.