Palate pleasers

BFS Foods and Tim Hortons are coming to Washington County – in the same building.
Bruceton Food Service, a convenience store chain based in Morgantown, W.Va., is building one of its stores in Park Place at Meadow Lands, a mixed-use project in North and South Strabane townships. It is off Route 19 northbound at the intersection with Racetrack Road.
BFS has stores in four states – Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Maryland. Four are in Greene County.
This will be its first store in Washington County, although BFS already has a presence on Racetrack Road. It owns the Burger King there.
“We call this a superstore,” Hayley Graham, director of marketing for BFS, said of the Park Place site. She said the 7,500-square-foot store will include a touch-free car wash, a Dairy Queen Grill & Chill, a Little Caesars Pizza and the Tim Hortons.
Graham said BFS anticipates an October opening for the store, which will be in South Strabane near the front of the project. The majority of Park Place is in North Strabane.
On its website, timhortons.com, Tim Hortons describes its restaurants as “fast casual.” They are wildly popular in Canada – company headquarters are in Oakville, Ontario – but have gotten a lukewarm reception in the United States. Tim Hortons is known for coffee and doughnuts north of the border, where it has more than 3,000 sites.
This will be the first Tim Hortons in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The closest one to this area is in Wheeling, W.Va.
Tim Hortons Inc. is a stand-alone public company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange and was once owned by Wendy’s.
Dave Biafora of Metro Property Management, the Morgantown-based developer of the project, said he is pleased with the progress being made.
“It moved a little slow over the winter, but we’re pretty happy with production,” he said. “Finally, the intersection is done.”
Biafora said North Strabane has approved permits for a 200-plus unit apartment complex/fitness center and that “we’re ready to break ground.”
As with almost everything, Tim Hortons has a Pittsburgh tie, tenuous though it may be.
Tim Horton, co-founder of the restaurant chain with Ron Joyce, was a bruising, brawling defenseman in the National Hockey League for all or part of 24 seasons. He spent 20 of them with the Toronto Maple Leafs, with whom he won four Stanley Cups.
Horton spent three seasons with the Pittsburgh Hornets, the Leafs’ top minor-league affiliate, in the early 1950s, registering a career high 146 penalty minutes in 1951-52. He ended his career playing briefly for three other NHL teams, including the Penguins for the entire 1971-72 campaign.
Horton, who founded with chain with Ron Joyce, died at 44 in an auto accident Feb. 21, 1974. According to Wikipedia, he was being chased by police in St. Catharines, Ontario.
After lanquishing in the spring, the Holiday Inn Express project has sprung forward in North Strabane Township. Far forward.
“They’re going to start building the foundation soon,” said Doug Trbovich, building code officer for the township.
Construction at the site off Racetrack Road, began in mid-December, but was halted about six weeks later when workers hit voids while drilling for the foundation. The site is in an area where mines were once common.
That raised subsidence concerns only two miles north of The Foundry project, which was shut down in 2008 because of shifting earth.
Double J Development of Morgantown, W.Va., is in charge of the project, which calls for an 87-room Holiday Inn Express to go up just inside the entrance to Meadowlands Business Park.
Trbovich said Double J filled the voids with concrete and that the project still may be completed by year’s end, the original target.
“It was delayed slightly, but they can make that (time) up,” Trbovich said.
A contingent of 10 German academicians and media members apparently were impressed by what they experienced in Washington and Greene counties six weeks ago.
On June 27, they participated in a roundtable discussion with representatives of the area’s energy industry at the Hilton Garden Inn at Southpointe, then later that afternoon toured a Vantage Energy Appalachia II LLC well site in Greene. Pittsburgh Regional Authority organized the double-event.
Apparently, it was a double-treat for the German group, who seemed to be intrigued by fracking and all things Marcellus Shale.
Dr. Tobias Blasius said: “I was very impressed with the way in which the different perspectives on fracking were discussed in Pennsylvania and particularly with the safety standards that are being developed on a voluntary basis. The economic opportunities provided by the shale gas industry in the region around Pittsburgh get much too little attention in Germany.”
Dr. Boris Berger: “I found it particularly interesting to learn about the various industries and business that develop and thrive around the fracking industry, some of them based on very innovative ideas and concepts.”
Karsten Jung: “I was left with the impression that the discussion in the United States seems somewhat more advanced than it is here in Germany and that some of the arguments we heard in Pittsburgh have not yet been introduced in the German debate. We hope that our research project may contribute to changing that.”
Anthony Plastino II of Peters Township has been certified in an area realized by only 148 other attorneys in Pennsylvania.
Plastino – of Jones, Gregg, Creehan & Gerace LLP in Pittsburgh – has been certified as a specialist in workers’ compensation law by the state Bar Association Workers’ Compensation Law Section.
He had to submit documentation of his work in the area of workers’ compensation and passed the certification exam.
Rick Shrum is business writer for the Observer-Reporter