May 25, 2019 3 min read

It was not a 4.0, but the Pittsburgh region got a pretty good report card.

The Allegheny Conference on Community Development and its affiliate, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, released their 12th annual Pittsburgh Regional Business Investment Scorecard on Thursday, and the 10-county region distinguished itself.

Of the 340 deals, 257 were in investment and 83 in development. The size of those deals, however, were smaller than the year before – a blotch on the report card. They accounted for $3.8 billion in capital investment, down from $5.6 billion in 2017 and from a peak of $10 billion-plus in 2016.

That would have been different if Amazon had selected the region for its second headquarters.

PRA collects and analyzes economic development data from Washington, Greene, Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Indiana, Lawrence and Westmoreland counties. Its report card is not scientific, but is a barometer for the regional economy and assists PRA in planning.

The alliance determined that last year’s deals led to the creation of 7,660 jobs and the retention of another 10,568. And for the second year in a row, it found Information Technology/Robotics to be the “most active” sector, posting a 51% increase in activity from 2017.

Employees at the region’s IT companies, according to PRA, are paid an average of $104,585 per year – 94.5 percent higher than the average wage throughout the region ($53,900).

Manufacturing was the “second-most-active” sector last year, with 56 deals and $252 million in capital expenditures.

Energy was another sector that performed well in 2018, according to the report – rebounding with more than twice as many deals as it made in 2017.

Several deals detailed in the report are located in this area:

• Nine Energy Services, a Houston, Texas-based oil and gas company, which is building a 38,000-square-foot regional headquarters in Alta Vista Business Park, Fallowfield Township, at a cost of $4 million. (That building will eventually replace the regional offices in Charters Township.)
• Shell Lubricants to operate a 455,000-square-foot distribution center in Starpointe Business Park, Hanover Township. An estimated 200 to 215 jobs will be created in a $49 million deal.
• A 1,000-megawatt natural gas power plant, creating 25 jobs, in Monongahela Township.APV Renaissance Partners Opco LLCManufacturing continues to be strong, finishing second in “Most Active” sectors;
• Rye Development projects in Greene, Allegheny and Beaver counties: hydroelectric infrastructure, pipelines, compressor stations and controls. The deals total $555 million.