The year in business: Commercial construction boom
An artist's rendering of the Hyatt Place hotel planned at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino
The Old Mill is beginning to take shape as the building progresses behind the Olive Garden along Route 19 in South Strabane Township in this mid-December photo.
Washington County’s geography doesn’t change, but its landscape does. Constantly.
The undulating hills, serpentine roadways, vertical descents and expansive valleys are being adorned with development, development everywhere. Housing development, business development, health care development and even highway development have accelerated to accommodate the companies and consumers moving in.
And all are fueled, to various extents, by shale development.
The Observer-Reporter’s year-end business wrapup is largely about boom in a boom area.
The business climate throughout the two-county region has been favorable in 2013, but not all of the news has been positive. FirstEnergy Corp. shut two coal-fired power stations on Oct. 18, Mitchell in Union Township, Washington County, and Hatfield’s Ferry in Monongahela Township, Greene County.
Consol Energy sold five West Virginia mines to Murray Energy this fall, but its Greene interests remained unscathed: the Bailey and Enlow Fork mines and the continuing expansion of BMX Mine.
Here is a rough rundown of business development in these counties in 2013:
• Park Place at the Meadowlands: The initial shops in this mixed-use project opened Oct. 30 — a BFS convenience store with Sunoco gas pumps; a car wash; and three BFS franchisees located within: Tim Hortons restaurant, Little Caesars Pizza and Dairy Queen Grill & Chill.
Those shops are in South Strabane Township, near the intersection with Racetrack Road, but the majority of this 44-acre project is in North Strabane Township. Phase I is expected to be completed in January with the opening of the second building, a two-story structure that will feature the investment firm Waddell & Reed, Tender Care Learning Center, Napoli’s Restaurant, a dry cleaners, yogurt shop, sunbed tanning facility and hair salon, and two medical offices.
Phase II will kick off with construction of a 200-unit-plus apartment complex. David Biafora of Metro Property Management, the project developer, is hoping for a January or February groundbreaking.
• Meadows Landing: A half-mile south of Park Place, this long-delayed mixed-use project was launched in mid-September with the groundbreaking for Washington Health System’s outpatient center. Most of the skeleton is up for a building that will house Tri-State Surgery and Washington Ear Nose & Throat, which are relocating from Leonard Avenue in Washington; WHS Women’s Diagnostic Center; Southwestern Gastroenterology Oncology Associates; Keystone Anesthesia Associates; and other physicians’ offices that have not been determined.
Washington Area Teachers Federal Credit Union also will open a branch at the 204-acre South Strabane site, and a GetGo convenience store/gasoline station is planned.
• Old Mill: The Foundry got a new name in May and will have a larger presence in 2014. Work began this summer and the shell of a wide structure, to accommodate numerous in-line stores, is up. No new tenants have signed on, but some may do so soon, said Andy Boyd, senior asset manager for the Staenberg Group, the shopping center developer in charge of the project.
Subsidence damage in 2008 forced the closure of three of the four businesses that located in The Foundry. Max & Erma’s restaurant, unaffected by land issues, is still there and got a neighbor last December, when Olive Garden opened.
• Street at the Meadows: This retail/apartment complex with four outparcels for dining is still in a planning mode. Horizon Properties principal Michael Swisher said in late December a spring groundbreaking is anticipated for the 23-acre project, which will be built below the Hyatt Place hotel and Meadows Racetrack & Casino.
• Hyatt Place: Ground was broken Dec. 11 for the 155-room Hyatt, the first of that brand in Washington County. It will be on four acres near the front of the Meadows Racetrack & Casino. Bill Paulos, co-founder and principal of Cannery Casino Resorts, owner of The Meadows, said when the Hyatt is completed, there will be more than 1,000 hotel rooms within five miles of the complex.
• Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham: This 80-room, no-frills, short-stay facility opened in mid-October in Chartiers Township — the eighth hotel on or near Racetrack.
• Holiday Inn Express: The Express — an 87-room, short-stay hotel — is a work in progress near Meadowlands Business Park. It is targeted to open in mid-2014.
• Town Center: Lead developer Horizon Properties launched its Town Center project, a 34-acre campus of restaurants, retail, offices and apartment living, a combination long seen as the community focal point for those who live and work in the mixed-use development.
Before year’s end, as two 60,000-square-foot, two-story buildings neared completion, Horizon announced several new restaurants that will eventually fill the ground level of the two buildings. All-Star Sports Bar & Grill, Saga Japanese Steak House and Sushi Bar, Zoup, Crazy Mocha and Let’s Yo, a frozen yogurt shop, are among those signed, Swisher said. He said letters of intent were received from a prime steak house and an Italian bistro.
• Apartments: Construction activity surrounding the Town Center project also continued unabated throughout 2013, with site work beginning on a 350-unit apartment building.
• Mylan HQ: Generic pharmaceutical giant Mylan Inc. officially opened its new global headquarters, which borders the Town Center, on Dec. 19.
• Holiday Inn Express: The 85-room hotel in Southpointe II was nearing completion at the end of the year and will join the Homewood Suites and Hilton Garden Inn in the mixed-use park.
• Ansys HQ: Engineering simulation software developer Ansys Inc. committed to moving to a 186,000-square-foot building in the three-building Zenith Ridge project being built by Burns & Scalo Real Estate of Green Tree. Not long after construction began on Ansys’ new building, Burns & Scalo erected the second of the Zenith Ridge buildings.
Southpointe II, which benefited strongly from the arrival of energy companies like Consol Energy and Range Resources and their supply chain partners, set a trend that was repeated throughout the area’s other business and industrial parks.
• Alta Vista: In late June, Alta Vista Business Park sold a 9.2-acre parcel to Scientific Drilling International, a Houston, Texas, company that provides high-accuracy drilling navigation for the oil and gas, geothermal and mining industries. SDI expects to employ 150 to 200 in the park. Also signed was Houston-based Waukesha-Pearce Industries, a global designer and packager of engine-driven equipment, including power generation, pumps, blowers, control panels and switch gears. The company plans to bring about 50 people to the park.
Not all newcomers to the county’s business parks were related to the energy industry. In Starpointe Industrial Park near Burgettstown, industrial door manufacturer Hörmann Flexon opened its 65,000-square-foot first-phase building, moving its current workforce of 30 from Leetsdale to the new site. The company plans to double its workforce at Starpointe within the next two years.
• EverGreene Technology Park. Greene County’s EverGreene Technology Park in Franklin Township was also a beneficiary of an energy industry.
“It’s been a busy year,” said Don Chappell, executive director of Greene County Industrial Development Inc., which markets Evergreene Technology Park and Paisley Industrial Park in Cumberland Township.
According to Chappell, much of the activity this past year focused on EverGreene and was attributed to the pickup in the economy as well as the park’s location next to Interstate 79. “Location is always a major factor,” he said.
“We culminated the year with our largest sale ever, a $1.1 million sale of 14.8 acres at EverGreene,” he said.
Red Cedar Partners LLC was the buyer. It will construct two buildings on the site. The first, which it will start early next year, will be an 11,000-square-foot building for FMC Technologies Inc., a global oil and natural gas equipment service corporation.
•R.J. Johnson Co. also recently completed construction of two buildings at EverGreene on 7.1 acres it had purchased from GCID the year before. The company, which constructs shafts for the coal mining industry, is now moving into the buildings, Chappell said.
• GCID also sold 2 acres at EverGreene to Irwin Car and Equipment, which will begin construction of a building early next year.
The 248-acre park now has three buildings. One is occupied by Consol Energy Inc.; another is the Waynesburg Readiness Center of the Pennsylvania National Guard; and the third houses the R.J. Lee Group and the Greene County campus of Westmoreland County Community College.
Chappell said the park has 16 to 17 acres that are pad ready. GCID also is preparing to develop an additional 10-acre lot and an 8-acre lot at the park. It is working to obtain the required permits and hopes to seek bids for the work in January, he said.
• Another large commercial real estate transaction in Greene County involved the remaining properties in the Waynesburg Crossing retail development in Franklin Township, which were sold to Kari Resources LP, headed by Gary R. Bowers of Producers Supply in Waynesburg.
Bowers purchased the 152.9 acres for $1.3 million from Land Holding LLC, which had earlier been assigned the mortgage to the property by PNC Bank.
The sale included all property in the retail development except the 46.3 acres owned by Walmart, which opened a store there in March 2009 and has remained the development’s only tenant.
• In other commercial real estate news in 2013, Greene Plaza in Franklin Township saw the opening of the 80-room Hampton Inn.
Bob Niedbala, a staff writer for the O-R’s Greene County bureau, contributed to this story.