"Pittsburgh Airport corridor thriving with new development"

Monday, June 23, 2008

Airport corridor thriving with new development
By Bonnie Pfister
THE PITTSBURGH (PA) TRIBUNE-REVIEW


Even though record-high fuel prices are hindering U.S. airlines, development
is growing in the real estate corridor surrounding Pittsburgh International
Airport. 

Several companies are expanding their footprints and work forces into
offices circling the airport, and buildings are going up in anticipation of
further growth. 

North Fayette's Knepper Press this month will move into a $5 million
facility in Clinton Commerce Park, northeast of the airport. Across Route
60, space is being cleared for a new headquarters for Dick's Sporting Goods.
On the southwest perimeter, Moon firm ATS-Chester Engineers will build a
home in Cherrington Commerce Park, and across the newly widened Ewing Road,
US Airways' flight operations control center is to open this fall. Nearby
Eaton Corp. is finishing a $24 million expansion of the headquarters for its
global electrical business. 

The Findlay Connector to the airport from Route 22 opened in late 2006.
Combined with the completion later this year of the Interstate 79 "missing
ramps" linking the North Hills to the Parkway West, development advocates
say things are coming together for the West Hills. 

"The preparation made five years ago is beginning to pay off," said Dewitt
Peart, president of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. The Allegheny County
Airport Authority prepared industrial sites, and private investors have been
key, he said. "For years, we didn't have the sites where you could do this
kind of development." 

About $25 million in state grants, in addition to private investment, and
municipal and tax-increment financing for utilities and roads, mean that
development of about 2,000 acres in the airport corridor is freshly built,
under way or coming, according to the county Department of Economic
Development. 

Part of the challenge was taming the hilly landscape. Developing land around
the airport in Columbus, Ohio, for example, costs about $25,000 per acre,
said Randy Forister, senior development director for the airport authority.
Here it costs about $150,000 per acre. 

"You can tell someone that this would be a great place to locate their
company," Forister said on a recent drive around the airport's perimeter,
gesturing to dense acres of wooded slopes. "But if you want new companies
and new jobs, you have to show them sites that are clean, clear and ready
for development." 

Private industrial parks are coming. Grubb & Ellis Co. is marketing the
640-acre Industrial District at WestPort, part of the Imperial Land Co.'s
holdings, along the Findlay Connector. Utility lines are being completed,
and letters of intent for three parcels are signed, said Grubb & Ellis vice
president Lou Oliva. Chapman Commerce Center is going up nearby. 

"We're very bullish," Oliva said. "The airport corridor is where all the
action is going to be the next 10 years." 

Eaton Corp.'s electrical group provides power control and distribution
equipment and service to commercial sites, including Heinz Field and PNC
Park, among other services. Born of former Westinghouse holdings, it is
expanding in a private Cherrington industrial park, where it employs more
than 850 people, and is the largest business of the diversified
Cleveland-based company. 

Proximity to the airport was a factor in Eaton's decision to expand in Moon
rather than North Carolina, where the company has substantial holdings.
Marketing vice president Mike Longman said the company "would have thought
about it longer" but might have made the same choice had it known US Airways
would trim its Pittsburgh flights by nearly 40 percent in 2007. 

For other firms expanding nearby, airport access is an extra, rather than a
key element. 

"In many respects, a lot of our users like the access and the amenities the
West Hills has," said Bill Hunt, whose firm The Elmhurst Group leases the
at-capacity Airside Business Park. Shopping in nearby Robinson is desirable,
as are the buildings that manufacturers tell him are important for
recruiting hires. 

"Traffic isn't that bad," Hunt said. "You don't have tunnels in that area.
It's pretty livable." 

Business breeds other business, he said. 

"We just signed a lease with Adidas. They wanted to be near Dick's Sporting
Goods," he said about that company's planned expansion to the airport
authority's Northfield site from another authority industrial park, both in
Findlay. Dick's outgrew its original building, which expanded four years
ago. 

Jake Haulk, president of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a Castle
Shannon think tank, said Dick's move raises a concern: Several of the
developments are existing businesses moving from other regional locations. 

"I'm not sure how much the taxpayers should be paying for clearing land,"
Haulk said about state grants used to help prepare airport authority sites.
"Dick's was helped before. There is a tendency for companies to always have
their hands out." 

But for Knepper Press, for example, a move of some kind was crucial to
increasing revenue and jobs. 

CEO Ted Ford expects the company to increase employees and sales by about 40
percent in the next three years by adding a German-designed press that would
not have fit into Knepper's North Fayette facility. The company's 110
workers are moving this month into the new facility, where the authority
spent nearly $9 million to level and clear the land, build access roads and
move a gas line. 

"It required a new building with 30-foot ceilings," Ford said. "They're hard
to find in Western Pennsylvania."

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