Residential Real Estate

Pittsburgh Business Times
by Tim Schooley

Rock Ferrone’s ambition to develop a busy industrial park around an air strip in West Deer Township near Pittsburgh appears to have reached the end of the runway.

On Monday, NAI Pittsburgh Commercial announced that it has been hired to market the 263-acre Rockpointe industrial park for sale, either in its entirety or in smaller parcels.

“For whatever reason, it just didn’t work out and he wasn’t able to attract the building owners and users like he needed to,” said Gregg Broujos, a principal for NAI working on the assignment for Ferrone. “He’s going to move on and sell it so that someone else can finish it off.”

The sale includes the 3,500-foot air strip and its surrounding acreage. Not included in the sale are the two buildings owned and occupied by Management Safety Associates, Inc. or the building owned and operated by Joseph B. Fay Company. Independent of the sale of the park, Zambrano Corp. is also marketing for sale a 65,000 square foot office building within the park which is fully vacant.

John Bilyak, principal and director of Industrial brokerage for NAI, called the land included in the sale “western Pennsylvania flat” and estimated that 60 percent to 70 percent of the overall property included in the sale is developable. The industrial park is fully equipped with all utilities and infrastructure.

The park is zoned industrial with a business and technology overlay, according to NAI.
The goal is to sell the property to one buyer but Broujos and Bilyak said the land could be subdivided for smaller users as well, with seven acre-parcels selling in the range of $30,000 to $60,000 per acre.

Close to the Pittsburgh Mills and 25 minutes from Downtown Pittsburgh, the park is accessible to Route 28. Bilyak expects demand to be strong since industrial, office and land in the Allegheny Valley corridor he described as “historically tight.”

“If you try to identify a three-to-seven-acre parcel along the 28 corridor you really have to go up into Armstrong county before you can have options,” said Bilyak.

The property goes on the market as its status as a Keystone Opportunity Zone, which enables the owner to avoid state and local taxes, is set to expire at the end of the year after a ten-year term, said Bilyak.

Bilyak and Broujos hope to sell the property this year and are marketing it nationwide.

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