With the last die hard school districts opening this week it finally feels like summer’s done and for 2012 good riddance. At least from a business standpoint. Uncertainty made cowards of a lot of business people and projects scheduled to move just sat and waited. Now it appears that owners are feeling a bit better or have realized there’s no advantage to waiting to see who’s president next year because there has been an uptick in activity on the real estate front.

One place that’s definitely jumping is Southpointe. Rycon is working on a 150,000 sq ft spec building called the J. Barry Center and the developer – Horizon Properties – is re-bidding its 130,000 sq ft Town Center retails buildings on the 18th. Bear Construction has started on the 20,000 sq ft Fletcher Industries building. Burns & Scalo Real Estate has upped the size of their plans for 2 office buildings from 125,000 sq ft each to a total of 416,000 sq ft. An announcement about tenants may come soon.

Marshall University has its $50 million Weisberg Center out to bid due October 3. In PA the biggest public job bidding now is the $5 million PA Lumber Museum project in Galeton. In the private sector, USAA has the tenant space for Williams Midstream out to bid to Landau, Martini, Rycon, Harvey-Clay & James Construction. That’s a 75,000 space in Park Place Corp. Center near the airport. Following up some recent bids, Busse was awarded a $2 million renovation at the Doubletree in Green Tree. TEDCO is working on the Janney Montgomery Scott space – 22,000 sq ft in One PPG Place.

There are lots of big space users looking right now. With an economy that is growing while the national economy is fizzling, Pittsburgh should be a good place for construction in 2013, although the same could have been said about 2012.