After a recent story about softening at Southpointe, there have been two notes this week that suggest that the region’s largest office park is bouncing back quickly. Southpointe added millions of square feet since the start of Southpointe II back in 2006. The rise of the natural gas business filled the park up with names like Range Resources, MarkWest and Noble Energy. The downturn in commodity prices has meant that some of these businesses have pard back and Southpointe has seen vacancy rise to 10%. That’s going to be a fact of life in Washington County as long as the gas business is driving the economy.
Earlier this week, Mylan announced that it was going to build a 1,407-car, $14 million garage adjacent to its Southpointe HQ (Carl Walker Construction is the project’s general contractor). Today, it was reported that MedExpress was interested in leasing one of the two empty buildings that make up the bulk of Southpointe’s vacancy.
Further up the road, Burns & Scalo Real Estate Services announced plans for two new 80,000 square foot buildings at Abele Business Park in South Fayette Township. Jim Scalo said that the buildings would be spec and that there was already a significant lease in the works. Burns & Scalo also has a couple of new 120,000 squar foot buildings on the boards at the RIDC Park West, although land acquisition hasn’t been completed.