Allegheny Energy

FirstEnergy Corp. announced Friday that its merger with Allegheny Energy Inc. has closed, effective Friday, marking the beginning of combined operations. It also plans to reintroduce the utility operating names - Potomac Edison, Mon Power and West Penn Power - to Allegheny Power customers, according to a news release. The company also announced that it will locate regional headquarters for Maryland utility operations at Allegheny Power's existing central distribution center in Washington County.

The impending merger of Allegheny Energy and FirstEnergy could lead to more charitable donations for the local community as well as modest rate credits or reductions for Allegheny's customers and more backup for repairs after major outages, officials with the two utility companies said. On Tuesday, the Maryland Public Service Commission approved the merger with 20 conditions, most of which were consistent with a previous settlement agreement. That started the clock on the 30-day period the merging companies have to respond to the commission's order and left one more regulatory hurdle to clear — approval by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

In approving the Allegheny Energy/FirstEnergy merger, the Maryland Public Service Commission called on the utilities to "meet certain conditions that track (and, in certain instances, build upon) commitments the applicants offered to make in the course of this case. " "These conditions will ensure that Potomac Edison's ratepayers share in the synergies and savings expected to result from the transaction, that Potomac Edison is protected appropriately against the potential new risks of being part of this new, bigger company, and that our state share in the economic development and renewable energy opportunities the applicants have promised," the PSC said in its order dated Jan. 18. The PSC, in the document, said "because our conditions differ in some respects from those contained in the Joint Petition for Approval of Settlement," the applicants must decide whether to proceed on these terms.

Visiting the mound in a bases-loaded, no-out situation, the late Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver - fresh out of good advice - once told his beleaguered pitcher, “If you know how to cheat, this would be the time.” In a similar vein, if the City of Hagerstown has an ace up its sleeve to lure the Washington County Board of Education downtown, Tuesday will have to be the day it's unveiled. This week, board members indicated they are leaning strongly not to downtown, but to the former Allegheny Energy headquarters on Downsville Pike as the site for their new central offices.

HAGERSTOWN - The days of Allegheny Energy as a Washington County-based company are coming to an end. The energy supplier's headquarters will move from Downsville Pike southwest of Hagerstown to Greensburg, Pa., company employees learned Wednesday. The move to Greensburg is expected to be completed by Sept. 1, said Michelle Morris, Allegheny Energy's vice president of corporate communications. The company has more than five times as many employees in and around Greensburg as in Maryland, Morris said.

Vinayaka Missions, which recently sold approximately 44 acres to Washington County Public Schools, has paid its overdue property taxes, County Treasurer Todd Hershey said Monday. The former owners of 10435 Downsville Pike, the site of the former Allegheny Energy headquarters, paid the $56,076.54 in overdue taxes and interest on April 24, Hershey said. Vinayaka Missions sold the land to the school system a week ago for $5.5 million. The school system plans to renovate the building on Downsville Pike so it can move its administrative offices, now off Commonwealth Avenue, to the Downsville Pike property.

daniels@herald-mail.com HAGERSTOWN - Unable to implement its vision for a high-end business park at the site, Allegheny Energy on Friday announced the sale of Friendship Technology Park and its former Hagerstown corporate headquarters to a private development company with ties to A.C. & T. Co. for an undisclosed sum. Representatives from Oak Ridge XVII LLC, could not be reached for comment Friday, but officials from Allegheny and...

Allegheny Energy Inc. announced Thursday that Paul E. Slobodian, the former president of Pivot Consulting, LLC, has been named vice president of Human Resources and Administration of Allegheny Energy, effective immediately. He succeeds Richard J. Gagliardi who retired earlier this month. "We are pleased that Paul is joining the Allegheny senior management team. He brings to our company extensive experience in all aspects of human resources management and organizational development, as well as a strong history of linking performance to business results," said Paul J. Evanson, Allegheny Energy's chairman, president, and chief executive officer.

A sheet of paper with the words “Do not move” was taped to the U-shaped receptionist desk. A similar note was taped to a large white planter nearby that contained a pot of crusty old soil and dead plant material. A few yards away was a set of double glass doors with locked chains wrapped around the handles of the exterior doors. Rock music was piped through the sound system and custodial, maintenance and technology workers occasionally were encountered in the vast office building that once was home to a Fortune 500 power company and will, possibly by the end of this year, start to house administrative offices for Washington County Public Schools.

Vinayaka Missions, which recently sold approximately 44 acres to Washington County Public Schools, has paid its overdue property taxes, County Treasurer Todd Hershey said Monday. The former owners of 10435 Downsville Pike, the site of the former Allegheny Energy headquarters, paid the $56,076.54 in overdue taxes and interest on April 24, Hershey said. Vinayaka Missions sold the land to the school system a week ago for $5.5 million. The school system plans to renovate the building on Downsville Pike so it can move its administrative offices, now off Commonwealth Avenue, to the Downsville Pike property.

The Washington County Board of Education now owns approximately 44 acres and the former headquarters of Allegheny Energy along Downsville Pike. The school board settled the $5.5 million purchase with property seller Vinayaka Missions on Monday, school system spokesman Richard Wright said. The school system plans to move its administrative offices, now at buildings on Commonwealth Avenue and Frederick Street, to the 10435 Downsville Pike property. The school system has already begun seeking bids or quotes on some of the work that needs to be done at the Downsville Pike property, said Rob Rollins, director of facilities planning and development.

“Since Rachel Maddow and the radical left MSNBC are still blaming Bush for lying about the weapons of mass destruction so he could start the Iraq war 10 years ago, if they would do their research, they would find that the United Nations inspectors at the time were given the runaround by Saddam Hussein, while the chemical weapons were being moved out of Iraq to Syria to be used on Israel. The left media will probably still blame Bush and not place the blame where it should be. Do you miss Bush yet?

Congratulations to the Washington County Board of Education for correctly answering the following question: Would you bet $50,000 on the city of Hagerstown being able to get its act together in the course of one month? The answer, of course, is no. So the school board wasn't about to spend any more money to extend the option it had on a piece of county property that will become its new home. The board agreed Tuesday to purchase the former Allegheny Energy building for its new headquarters, rejecting a plea from the council to delay the decision while the city worked out a suitable alternative that would have sent the central offices into downtown.

The Washington County Board of Education ended months of speculation Tuesday afternoon by voting unanimously to buy the former Allegheny Energy building on Downsville Pike to house its administrative offices. The $5.5 million purchase agreement includes more than 44 acres that one day could serve as the site for an elementary or middle school. Last week, schools Superintendent Clayton Wilcox told board members that renovating the 10435 Downsville Pike office building is estimated to cost $6.6 million.

Visiting the mound in a bases-loaded, no-out situation, the late Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver - fresh out of good advice - once told his beleaguered pitcher, “If you know how to cheat, this would be the time.” In a similar vein, if the City of Hagerstown has an ace up its sleeve to lure the Washington County Board of Education downtown, Tuesday will have to be the day it's unveiled. This week, board members indicated they are leaning strongly not to downtown, but to the former Allegheny Energy headquarters on Downsville Pike as the site for their new central offices.

In the late '90s, Allegheny Energy hoped it would become the next Enron; unfortunately, it succeeded. But for a brief year or two, before anyone had heard of raptors or Jeffrey Skilling, it appeared that Allegheny might soar in the rarefied, Fortune 500 air, wheeling and dealing energy contracts from coast to coast, raking in unbelievable fortunes and rubbing elbows with the likes of Merrill Lynch and the big boys on Wall Street. But by 2002, everything was blowing up. Most critically Allegheny lost big gambling in West Coast electricity markets - an activity that was a far cry from the old and dependable Potomac Edison business of generating and selling actual electricity back here in the 'hood.

Recalling his first tour of the former Allegheny Energy headquarters on Downsville Pike, Washington County Board of Education member Wayne D. Ridenour said he thought of the possibility the office building could house the school system's administrative offices and possibly a school. It was around 2005 and Ridenour, who knew the building's owners at the time, took a tour of the Downsville Pike building with a Realtor and Elizabeth Morgan, who was schools superintendent at the time.