BloombergBusinessweek December 21, 2020the suburbs and exurbs of Pittsburgh, including
Evans City. In October the county had an unem-
ployment rate of 5.9%, compared with 6.9% nation-
ally. But scratch the surface, and you discover all
the little ways the local economy is hurting.
At Evans City’s Sports & Spirits, business is down
60% this year, says Deb Collins, who bought the
restaurant with her husband two decades ago. The
surge in new cases has her worried that many small
establishments like hers won’t make it through the
winter, especially after Pennsylvania responded by
suspending indoor dining. “We’re hunkering down,
just trying to stay afloat,” she says.
At Fibercon International Inc., a family-owned
company that makes bobby-pin-thick strands of
steel used to reinforce concrete floors and walls,
orders are off by about one-third this year, says
Kevin Foley, vice president for sales and marketing.
The company, which received a $162,300 federal
Paycheck Protection Program loan in the spring,
hasn’t laid off any of its 18 workers. One project
for a major retailer has been put on hold, he says,
and a client that builds industrial parks has halted
new construction. Orders are slow going into next
year, and Fibercon’s sales team isn’t traveling. “It’s
a weird situation right now because our business
is based on meet and greet, being out in the field,”
Foley says. “And we’re landlocked.”
23Butler County has seen industries rise and fall.
Evans City began life as an oil town. Butler, the
county seat, was once home to Pullman-Standard,
which made many of the U.S.’s railroad carriages last
century. The county went into the pandemic hav-
ing found a healthy 21st century balance. Cranberry
Township,atthejunctionoftwomajorinterstates
anda 20-minutedrivefromdowntownPittsburgh,
hasbeenoneofthecity’sfastest-growing suburbs
for decades and built a brand as a low-tax alterna-
tive for corporate headquarters. But the county also
prides itself on its manufacturing base.
That mix has helped it avoid the hit that many
other communities have taken. But Butler County
also went into the closing months of 2020 with
about 5,000 fewer people employed than in
February, a dip of 5% that took the ranks of the
employed in the county down to 90,000, a level
last seen in 2012. Most of those who haven’t gotten
their jobs back were in the leisure and hospitality
business or in health care, says Leslie Osche, chair
of the county board of commissioners. If all goes
well, she says, they should be back at work within
18 months to two years.
Yet the reality is, despite the arrival of Covid
vaccines, the outlook for these as well as other
local area industries remains cloudy. Will there
still be demand for all the midlevel office buildings
in Cranberry Township? And for the restaurants,
hotels, and other services that have sprung up to
cater to the people those offices attracted?
Employees have been quicker to return to work
in suburban offices where they can commute by car,
says Jeremy Kronman, vice chairman of commercial
real estate firm CBRE Group Inc.’s Pittsburgh◀ The Living Dead
Museum in Evans
City, Pa., shuttered
in October◀ Foley“We’re
hunkering
down, just
trying to
stay afloat”