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Location and amenities key to success of Abele Business Park
Location and amenities key to success of Abele Business Park
Largest office campus in South Fayette offers tenant-focused services
By Andrea Iglar
It’s the closest thing South Fayette has to the Hollywood sign.
On a hillside above the Interstate 79 interchange, 12-foot-high capital letters spell ABELE, marking the site of the township’s largest business park.
The area is a hub of activity for about 70 tenants, who lease spaces ranging from several hundred to thousands of square feet.
Abele (locally pronounced AB-ell-ee) is the name of a white poplar tree. The namesake business park has 300,000 square feet of office and flexible-use space in 17 single-story buildings, owned and operated by Burns Scalo Real Estate.
The largest space belongs to Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania. The nonprofit signed a 10-year lease in 2018 for 17,000 square feet that includes JA BizTown, a business district simulation designed to teach youth about the workforce, finance and community functions.
Each year, JA BizTown welcomes 4,000 students from 56 counties in Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, so Abele's location next to I-79 is key, spokesperson Kim Sterling said.
“It provides us the opportunity to really have an easy access point,” Sterling said, noting the business park is situated amid a “hub for a lot of great activity.”
Green Tree-based Burns Scalo, founded in 1956, bought the bulk of Abele in 2015 and renovated the circa-1980s buildings. The real estate firm provides a full slate of services that don’t stop after a client signs a lease.
Brokerage advisor Joe Sheerer said working with clients goes beyond paperwork.
“It makes it better having a more personal relationship with tenants,” he said. “Building those relationships, seeing each other face to face, makes a huge difference.”
The focus on customer service is perhaps rooted in the family culture of Burns Scalo, where the staff includes relatives who have prepared for their jobs through both formal education and on-the-job training.
Brokerage advisor Nick Scalo, the son of CEO Jim Scalo, painted warehouses in Abele when he was a teenager, later interning at the firm, graduating from West Virginia University with a marketing degree, earning a real estate license and joining the leasing team.
“I know this park very well, so it was easy for me to onboard,” he said.
The leasing team has close ties: Nick works with his second cousin, Shannon Rometo, and Sheerer has been his friend since kindergarten. Ruby Scalo, Nick’s sister, is senior brokerage advisor.
“It’s a testament to how family-owned we really are, not just corporate,” Rometo said. “It’s very cool working with family.”
Providing a range of real estate services, the team works with existing and potential clients to accommodate their needs, whether it is finding the right size and type of space, molding a creative financial deal, customizing interiors or facilitating an expansion.
Becki Lewis, owner of Lewis Music Studio, was operating in Abele for less than two years when she needed more space to teach lessons. In 2021, she quadrupled her space to 2,300 square feet at the top of the hill on Abele Road.
Lewis had wanted to stay in Abele because of factors like the convenient location, nearby amenities, peaceful setting and responsive maintenance crew.
“I said, ‘I desperately need to move, like, next month, I’m out of space,’” Lewis recalled. “Burns Scalo helped us with that. They told us from the start if you need to expand, we don’t penalize you.”
In addition to renting space in Abele, Burns Scalo can help businesses who need to expand beyond South Fayette. The firm recently joined NAI Global, an international brokerage network of more than 300 offices that allows the South Fayette team to help clients find commercial space around the world.
Locally, Burns Scalo provides an array of amenities to help retain leaseholders, draw workers back to the office and express client appreciation.
Tenants have free parking and private suites with individual entrances. Some spaces offer a dock and drive-in door. The campus includes exercise stations, walking paths and outdoor meeting benches.
The company held a community day at Abele in September and regularly welcomes food trucks.
Amenities don’t stop at the borders of Abele. Burns Scalo has developed The Piazza at South Fayette, a 50,000-squarefoot restaurant and retail center at the intersection of Route 50 and Hickory Grade Road, just minutes from the business park. A tenant perks program offers discounts at businesses in The Piazza and elsewhere.
Prior to construction of The Piazza, Burns Scalo surveyed tenants of Abele and the firm’s other South Fayette office and flex campus—Bursca Business Park, off Washington Pike—and asked what services they wanted to see added to the area.
“They all very collectively said lunch spots and happy hour spots,” Rometo said. “Some of them said fitness, some of them said hair salon. We actually have all of those. I do feel like we listened and provided that.”
Occupants of the three-level, tree-filled Abele campus offer medical, legal and financial services; fitness classes; support services; and more. Examples include Kaleidoscope Childcare Center; Ridgeview Physical Therapy & Wellness Center; Rx Partners; Barber National Institute; and Stout PGH, a Brazilian jiu jitsu studio. Vacancies are available.
The Abele campus also includes Burns Scalo’s Beacon 1, a fourstory, 80,000-squarefoot office building with sweeping views and tenants such as Waldron Private Wealth and iHeartMEDIA, the home of 102.5 WDVE-FM and five other radio stations.
Other properties in the park are independently owned by companies such as Cintas and Verizon.
The location of Abele is a huge draw. In addition to being adjacent to the I-79 exit in South Fayette, the business park lies only five miles from the South Fayette Way interchange of the newly built Southern Beltway, which connects to Pittsburgh International Airport.
Abele traffic uses Hickory Grade Road to access the business park. The township plans to use money contributed from developers to widen and expand Hickory Grade at its intersection with Route 50, starting as early as 2025.
Total value of Abele Business Park’s land and buildings exceeds $21 million, according to Allegheny County. This helps make Burns Scalo one of the top commercial taxpayers in South Fayette Township.
Rometo said Burns Scalo looks forward to continued growth in South Fayette— and she noticed that other businesses are following suit.
“A lot of people are investing in this area right now,” she said. “So it goes to show that something is going on, and people want to be a part of it.”
