Pittsburgh May 2022 – Key Take-Aways
• Mike Mitro, Royal Oak Realty Trust – Managing director of business development. Develop relationships with real estate owners, operators and developers who develop or own single-tenant properties, focusing on industrial and some office properties. They are private, non-traded real estate investment trust. Maintain real estate for industrial and office properties, generally through long-term lease contracts. Regional and national commercial real estate markets. They are not a developer but [work with] owner-operators, developers, and also accountants and lawyers.
• Todd Pifer, AdVenture Development, LLC – Has been with the company since 2019, has experience in hotel management and background in residential and commercial construction. Manages McCandless Crossing shopping district in Pittsburgh’s North Hills and consults on other projects. Latest project is in Raleigh — called Eastfield, a mixed-use project — located along I-95. This will be a business park, retail, medical, professional space, with hospitality, entertainment and residential including senior living on 400 or so acres. It’s a great spot, across the street is one of the largest outlet malls.
• Michael Takacs, Bohler – They have 28 offices, primarily along the Eastern Seaboard. Pittsburgh is the gateway, and they have one in Dallas, Texas. They have roughly 750 people — decent sized. Michael has been consulting for roughly 30 years. [Lately], they haven’t seen anything slow down — multi-family residential, industrial, and what we call “retail,” which is pretty broad: banks, convenience stores, car washes. Right now, there’s a “war of car washes,” like there was with – banks [building branches]. One client has 10 [car wash] sites right now is looking to have 85 open by 2023 in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan markets. These are made to look more traditional, like an “auto spa.” With Covid, everybody figured out different ways to deliver their services, such as ordering online and accommodating that or having a drive-thru, with the expectation that this is not going to last. Of course, online was already trending [before Covid]. And it’s not going back to where nobody’s ordering online.
• Angela Gillot, Burns Scalo Real Estate – Burns Scalo is a real estate developer. They hold onto their assets, provide leasing and property management. Angela’s role in property management is with the AWA program, which is now rebranded. For current tenants, when Covid hit, people shut their doors and walked out, and when they decided to come back, they asked, “What do I do with my space to get my employees back? I need them back.” Some industries, you have to be there in person, so we had to figure out how to upgrade our building with things such as touchless sanitization and other modifications. They have 300 tenants in our portfolio we put out that service to upgrade their space – new carpet or whatever, but also air filters, touchless devices, changing out hand dryers, light switches. It’s been a huge success. They sell a prescription program — Nanotouch [self-cleaning surfaces] — which has 90-day efficacy, activated by artificial lights. We change it out every 90 days for clients. They offer electrostatic cleaning, if Covid cases occur or there’s a high volume of people coming in and out of a building and you don’t know who touched what and when.
• Sarah Fullwood, Rock Chemicals Inc. – They are a bulk chemical distributor, primarily national but also international. Have a warehouse in Ohio. They sell chemicals of all types, from hand sanitizers to adhesives to chemicals for agricultural users, farming, industry, oil and gas.
• Gene Boyer, Burns Scalo – Gene’s primary focus is with the construction development group. Some of that continues to be a serious challenge for companies [post-Covid]. They have a different approach to keep deals alive, but sometimes you may have no choice but to go to the lowest number, the bottom line. Everybody’s looking for the right partner who understands the value of what your construction is. We are into acquisitions. They made serious runs at the Alcoa headquarters. They are looking for assets that they can reposition and marry our construction capabilities with a best-of-class brokerage.
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