A manufacturer that had hoped to grow within Pittsburgh, adding up to 30 new jobs, now plans to leave the city.
Machine shop Conturo Prototyping is located in North Point Breeze. But after losing out last fall on a bid to buy the Greater Pittsburgh Coliseum in Homewood, President John Conturo said his company will move to Wilkinsburg borough and Westmoreland County.
He said there is nowhere else in the city to go.
“It's just unfortunate that the industrial inventory has been shrinking. And that's not only the past couple of years,” he said. “It's been for a while that we've been kind of pushing it outward.”
Conturo Prototyping makes precision parts for high-tech uses such as aerospace, autonomous vehicles, and medical devices. The seven-year-old business employs about 30 people today, with plans to grow to roughly 50 workers in the next few years, according to Conturo.
In October, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh rejected the company’s proposal to expand within the Coliseum, while also scrapping a rival plan to restore the facility’s entertainment amenities. Located on Frankstown Avenue, the long-vacant streetcar barn has at various times housed a roller-skating rink, bowling alley, event space and cafe.
The two finalists emerged from a selection process that had lasted more than a year. Conturo Prototyping had included plans in its $4 million proposal for a free vocational school and neighborhood business storefronts.
But even so, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and URA board chair Kyle Chintalapalli faulted the bidding process last fall for failing to account adequately for the wishes of nearby community members.
Chintalapalli said at the time that his agency would still look for a new buyer. He did not provide a timeline, and on Thursday a spokesperson for the URA said in an email, “The project is currently on hold. We have no further comment at this time.”
Conturo said the URA had tried to help him find another site in Pittsburgh. But because the Coliseum was the only suitable option, he said he soon started to search elsewhere. As part of his move to Westmoreland County, he will acquire a machine shop that employs six people. He expects to close on the sale in late April and declined to identify the seller while the deal is still pending.
“In Westmoreland [County], there's just way more manufacturing, industrial-zoned land and industry,” he said. “It’s a lot easier. There’s a lot more inventory, so prices are a lot lower in that part of the region.”
He expects a few of his employees to relocate to Westmoreland County. The rest will move within the next year and a half to a Wilkinsburg facility that Conturo Prototyping purchased in 2019, the company’s president said.
“It's strategic to have at least a presence down here [near the city],” Conturo said, noting that the bulk of his staff prefers urban life.
He said about 25 employees – including engineers, software developers and production workers – will be located at the Wilkinsburg plant. Future hires, consisting primarily of factory floor personnel, will report to the Westmoreland County site.
“I actually think it's going to be beneficial because now we have a larger labor pool to pull from,” Conturo said. “We can now attract people that want to live really close to work. And, in Westmoreland County, there's a lot of manufacturing already, so there are already people with skills and knowledge in the trades.”
Still, he laments that the move will shrink his industry’s presence within the City of Pittsburgh.
“If you could put these types of manufacturing facilities within urban areas, have young people that are interested in it, see it in their backyard – they see that this is something [they] can do, and this is a career path [they] could go down and it's pretty rewarding,” he said.
However, after Pittsburgh officials suspended plans for the Coliseum, he said, “We pretty much moved on from that rather quickly because we knew it was a fruitless effort.”
Another potential buyer might not wait around either. Local business owner Rico Rucker was also a finalist in the URA’s bidding process for the Coliseum. He had pitched a $6 million to $8 million plan to turn the facility into an entertainment venue that would feature a roller rink, bowling alley and arcade games.
On Thursday, he said he is considering other URA-owned parcels in Homewood.
“Our ideal place will be the Coliseum, but we want to have a plan B and a plan C just as a backup, because we're definitely going to be opening a roller skating rink in the city of Pittsburgh,” he said. “We're just trying to have our ducks in order and have different options available for us.”
