Cleveland-Cliffs’ $195 million expansion plan moves forward
BUTLER TWP — Four months after it was first presented, Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works’ $195 million expansion project is advancing to a final vote in front of the township commissioners.
Butler Township Planning Commission members voted unanimously at a meeting Tuesday evening, April 7, to recommend Cliffs’ hot mill expansion for approval. The project will expand the hot mill and includes several auxiliary buildings to support it, such as three new electrical substations.
Despite the delays, Cleveland-Cliffs’ project manager Ben Frisbee said the expansion’s operational goal is still July or August 2028.
He said the project will likely only add a few technical jobs to the 1,300 or so employed there and will mainly serve to improve the quality of the steel produced.
Conversations around the expansion started in December 2025 when the land development application was first reviewed. However, the commission and borough engineer were hesitant because the expansion was set to push the facility’s edge 65 feet closer to Bessemer Avenue and the hillside it’s on.
Cliffs representatives previously said they had to place the furnaces in that specific location to keep the current mill process uninterrupted.
To address the hillside, the plan included a concrete-face retaining wall with soil nails — reinforcements inserted into the hillside — to hold them back. Township solicitor Rebecca Black suggested an agreement between the two parties, which is still being finalized.
“Their legal and the township’s legal have been working for several weeks to come to an agreement as to how we’re going to allow them to do that,” Township zoning officer Jesse Hines said Tuesday.
The project also required 49 feet of variance on the 50-foot setback usually required for industrial properties, which Hines said the township zoning hearing board previously approved.
The planning commission also approved two requested modifications for volume reduction and rate reduction requirements in the township’s stormwater ordinance.
Township engineer Jonathan Garczewski said these requests were “very minimal,” as they still fall within National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System guidelines.
Hines said a lot of delay from the project came from the need for Cleveland-Cliffs to complete a property survey.
“Because they were so close to that right of way with a foot setback and because they’re putting in the retaining walls in the right of way and the infrastructure for that, we said ‘we need a survey’ and that took some time,” he said.
Hines said the project still needs county planning approval, an agreement for the wall, a development agreement and stormwater agreement before work can begin.
The project is expected to be presented to the township’s board of commissioners at its next meeting, which is set for 6:30 p.m. April 20.
