To the east of Allegheny County lies the largest county in the state of Pennsylvania. You can get a sense of how big Westmoreland County is by looking at a map, but perhaps the best gauge of its size can be made by driving Route 22 east. Within a few minutes of passing the PA Turnpike and Parkway East intersection you’ll pass the McDonald’s and Pleasant Valley Road at the entrance to Murrysville, Westmoreland’s westernmost municipality. Almost an hour later, when you exit the highway at Armagh and start the ten-mile trip south to Johnstown, you’ll find yourself in St. Clair Township, at the eastern corner of the county.

Maybe the better indication of Westmoreland’s size is the diversity of the economies that exist in the county. In many ways, Westmoreland is more like five counties rolled into one.

To most people in the metropolitan area, Westmoreland County means Greensburg and Latrobe. The two towns, which now virtually blend into one another, are at the heart of the county. Greensburg is the county seat, and Latrobe is home to one of Westmoreland County’s most iconic figures, Arnold Palmer.

But at least as many people don’t realize that the county stretches far enough north to include the former industrial towns like New Kensington or Arnold in the Allegheny Valley, and west to the steel towns, like Monessen, on the east side of the Mon Valley. Westmoreland is also where the Laurel Highlands starts. The summer home of Pittsburgh’s rich and famous during the heyday of Carnegie and Frick, Ligonier is still home to rolling estates and one of America’s greatest golf courses, Laurel Valley. To the west lie the suburban bedroom communities like Murrysville, North Huntingdon, Hempfield and Penn Townships. And you only have to travel a few minutes on the new limited access roads leaving Greensburg to the north or south to be surrounded by working farms in all directions.

While the diversity of living makes it tough to hang a homogenous image on Westmoreland County, residents know that it means they are never more than an hour away from great boating on one of three rivers, skiing in the Laurel Mountains, or the amenities of the city of Pittsburgh. Living in Westmoreland gives you access to some of America’s most historic sites, and its highest technology, and puts you within commuting distance of one of the nation’s hottest cities. So how do you get a handle on what has made Westmoreland grow? Like most places it’s about jobs and taxes.

Working in Westmoreland (And Keeping More of What You Make)
The economy of Westmoreland County took a hit when the steel industry downsized in the early 1980’s. There were towns with steel mills in them, like Irwin, Monessen and New Kensington, and of course, communities surrounding the steel producing areas where the related businesses and bedrooms were located. In Westmoreland County, however, the economic development leaders did a great job of focusing on its thriving employers, and using the land and assets to attract new ones.

The Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp. (IDC) set about assembling sites that could be used to attract new businesses in the 1980’s. While many of these sites were virgin properties, the locations took advantage of Westmoreland’s existing roads and transportation facilities.

Beginning in 1989, the IDC began a decade long program of preparing new sites for development and reclaiming several industrial facilities for re-use. Between then and 2002, a dozen new industrial parks were developed, adding over 120 new employers and almost 7,500 new jobs to date.

The kind of employers attracted and the distribution of the sites was perhaps as important as the number of jobs created. Companies that have put facilities in the parks have ranged from heavy manufacturers to high-tech medical companies to natural gas service businesses. And the parks have been located in all four corners of the county, along the Route 30 growth corridor, as well as taking advantage of existing industrial sites in towns that were hard hit by the recession of the 1980’s, like Jeannette or Monessen.

Living and working in Westmoreland County won’t reduce the amount of income tax the government extracts from your paycheck, of course, but the difference in property taxes will certainly make it feel like you have a few more bucks in the bank each month. Homeowners in Westmoreland have significantly lower property taxes than those in Allegheny County, often as little as 60% of what a similar home is in Allegheny. That difference means that buyers can build a bit more home, or they can build a home that’s more affordable.

“I think the affordability can be the deciding factor,” says Dom Scalise, owner of Scalise Homes in North Huntingdon. “When you consider the great schools, the access to recreation and to the activities in Pittsburgh, and then compare a property tax structure that is maybe 60% or 70% lower, living in Westmoreland is a more affordable alternative.”

Location, Location, Location = Schools, Schools, Schools
Today’s buyer has a lot more information about schools at his or her fingertips. The ‘no child left behind’ program of the Bush administration created objective standards for measuring performance of schools. However flawed you may view that initiative, the emphasis on accountability spawned a whole industry of businesses that monitored the many metrics of school performance, from test scores to ratios of college admissions, and most of that information is out there on the Web. For the current generation of young parents, the Internet is integral to their research process.

“I used to get mothers who would call looking for certain districts. Now my calls are from moms who tell me they need a house and they want it to be in a certain elementary school,” laughed Dena Scalise of Scalise Real Estate. “Buyers used to know they wanted a specific builder and searched for his lots. Today it’s common to be the other way around: they know what schools they want their kids in and want to know what builders are in that area.”

Those dynamics aren’t limited to Westmoreland County buyers of course, but buyers are often surprised at how many of Westmoreland’s school districts are among the top rated districts in the state.

In the Pittsburgh Business Times Guide to Western Pennsylvania Schools, seven Westmoreland County schools ranked in the top 25 districts in this half of the state. Even more impressive was the fact that four districts, Franklin Regional, Greater Latrobe, Greensburg-Salem and Penn-Trafford ranked in the top 50 of the state’s 500 districts. Three others, Kiski Area, Norwin and Freeport, ranked in the top 75. By contrast, Beaver, Butler and Washington counties had only one district each in the top 100 in the state.

Test scores aren’t the only area where Westmoreland school districts shine. Sports teams from Westmoreland districts regularly compete for state championships in boys and girls events. All of the districts mentioned above have completed major building programs recently, and the resources provided are state of the art.

“My daughter was a freshman at Greater Latrobe,” related Dom Scalise. “On the third day of school they handed her a laptop and said ‘here’s your computer for the next four years.’”

Where Things Are Happening
Not surprisingly, the happening areas for new home construction over the past decade match up one-to-one with those good school districts, particularly the ones around the Route 30 corridor. “You can follow the growth the whole way along Route 30 where the districts are located that are desirable,”

says Dena Scalise. “Start with Latrobe and Unity Township and follow it the whole way back to Penn-Trafford at the county line.”“We believed that there was high growth coming to Westmoreland County about a decade ago,” explains Coldwell Banker’s Bill Dietrich. “We could see there was going to be a lot of development between Murrysville and Greensburg, and we’ve done very well there.”

Dietrich’s observation was of the commuter communities that had begun to pop up during the 1990’s between Monroeville and Greensburg. In Murrysville to the north and along the Route 30 corridor west from Penn Township to Hempfield, farms have been converted to subdivisions.

As might be expected, Murrysville began to develop rapidly in the 1990’s as infrastructure improvements made the commute to Pittsburgh more convenient, and as more people discovered the lower taxes and Franklin Regional schools. Already a Pittsburgh bedroom community before the growth spurt, Murrysville saw new construction of homes that were in the middle and upper ends of the marketplace. While the pace of activity has slowed recently, homes in the Heritage Estates, Sinan Farms, Westmoreland Farms or Bush Farms still sell.

Murrysville is typical of Westmoreland County in that custom homebuilders have the largest share of the market instead of higher producing builders. Companies like Decesare Corp., Suncrest Homes, Shula General Contractors, R. A. Snoznik, Waldec Homes and the Meritage Group are some of the builders who are building in Murrysville.

Just south of Murrysville is Penn Township and Manor. For residents of eastern suburbs like Penn Hills or Monroeville, the rolling farms of Penn Township represented conditions similar to Murrysville, good schools and close proximity to work in Pittsburgh.

“Penn Township became popular for a number of reasons,” says Howard Hanna Realty’s manager of new construction, Tom King. “One that is somewhat unique to Penn and Manor is that the builders who developed the area were often residents who lived there when they were tradesman. When you look at the builders who are still there — Dave Brentzel, Mark Cuomo, Rizzi, Jim Burczyk — these guys are all from Penn Township.”

King points out that the farms were more easily developed, which helped keep lot prices affordable. He also thinks the nature of the homebuilders helped make buyers feel comfortable. “Most of the builders were like the buyers, local guys trying to make a living. Even as they became successful, most of the owners could still use a hammer.”

One of the more established bedroom communities in the county is the Irwin/North Huntingdon Township area. Once the home of the white-collar workers and managers from the mills in McKees-port, as well as the USS Irwin Works, these suburbs are adjacent to the southeastern Allegheny community of North Versailles and surround a busy section of Route 30 near the Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange.

After World War II ended and the industrial Mon Valley provided steady employment, the high ground above grew fairly rapidly and spilled into North Huntingdon Township. Later, as more professionals worked downtown Pittsburgh during the 1960’s and 1970’s, the area grew as a commuter community. The Norwin School District, which serves this part of the county, developed a strong reputation for its education and extracurricular activities, ensuring that this part of Westmoreland County would remain popular with buyers.

More recently, North Huntingdon Township has been consistently among the most active municipalities for new residential construction, the only municipality ranking in the top ten most active for the last 15 years.

The Township has been the home to a number of subdivisions, like Kerber Farms and Chestnut Hill by Ryan Homes and Dartmoor Estates by Maronda Homes, developed by the most active builders in the region. But North Huntingdon is also the home of one of Westmoreland’s most expensive neighborhoods, The Legends, developed by Scalise Homes. And it is also served by a small number of true custom builders, like Keith Parry Homes and Nyberg Homes, as well as Westmoreland County’s biggest home-grown builder, RWS Developers.

Bob Schuster started RWS twenty years ago to make a change, leaving his family’s established building supply business. He had some very definite ideas about how he would build houses and wanted to put those ideas into practice in a market he knew well. “Everybody seems to be talking about green these days but we were building energy efficient houses since the beginning,” Schuster says. “We’ve always framed two-by-six exterior walls and used more insulation and energy efficient materials. When the state-wide building code came out a few years ago we didn’t have to change a thing for code.”

Schuster’s business model is that of a vertically-integrated operation. RWS owns and operates excavation and foundation equipment, buys and stores its own building materials, and self performs most of the home’s construction trades. Schuster believes this allows him to build and sell buy-up homes at prices that are competitive, and the strategy has produced between 50 and 100 new homes each year; in fact, RWS has been the fourth highest builder of single-family detached homes for all but one of the last 15 years.

Just to the east of the Murrysville, Penn and North Huntingdon Township markets is the heart of Westmoreland County, Greensburg. As is the case in many of the region’s submarkets, Greensburg city proper is the older, established area surrounded by the high growth township. In this case though, it has become difficult to distinguish between the two established towns in the center of the county, Greensburg and Latrobe, as their surrounding townships, Hempfield and Unity have grown together.

Like the suburbs to the west, Hempfield and Unity Townships have been among the fastest growing in the region for almost two decades. The central location places them still close enough for a long Pittsburgh commute, but even closer to the recreational

attractions of the county and the Laurel Highlands. Moreover, several of the counties main north-south arteries, including the limited access Amos K. Hutchinson toll road, intersect Route 30 in these two municipalities.

Greensburg and Latrobe have long been employment centers in Westmoreland County, and three of the four colleges located in the county, University of Pittsburgh, Seton Hill and St. Vincent, are located there. Making the area even more attractive of late have been the strength of key employers like Excela Healthcare (formerly Westmoreland Regional and Latrobe Hospitals) and Kennametal, whose international business has created great jobs for the region. In addition, both Hempfield and Unity have been the sites for dozens of new business facilities, and hundreds of thousand of square feet of new retail space.

The demand for housing in the central Westmoreland area is a bit broader, and has made Hempfield and Unity Townships good locations for larger developments by Ryan Homes, Maronda Homes, and S & A Homes. But the townships also have as many new homes built by custom builders who work predominantly in this submarket. Builders like J. A. S. Construction, Jim Thomas Construction, Building Visions, Pellis Construction, Scalise Construction, Regis Pisone Homes, Daniel Brentzel Construction, Inselmini Construction and R. A. Snoznik have put up homes in Greensburg’s and Latrobe’s many custom home neighborhoods. Although most of the new construction in Westmoreland County takes place along that Route 30 corridor, there are several other pockets of activity worth noting in the far reaching corners of the county.

In the north and south of the county, several municipalities have experienced modest growth as some of the IDC’s strategies have yielded jobs at new industrial parks in Upper Burrell in the north, and East Huntingdon and South Huntingdon Townships in the south. Golf course communities in East Huntingdon and Salem Townships triggered new construction earlier in the decade, and the economic conditions in both directions will keep demand continuing on scattered sites and smaller subdivisions.

The driving force in the eastern portion of the county is recreation. In response to the rejuvenation of Seven Springs, and a current overhaul and expansion of Hidden Valley by the Buncher Company, home shoppers who love the resorts are also finding that Donegal Township offers the same views and access, with affordable land and building costs. Having access to the PA Turnpike, Route 30 and to Ligonier make building in Donegal that much more appealing to home buyers.

Ligonier itself is also experiencing a consistent demand for new homes, although at a slower pace than the western Route 30 corridor. The town itself remains a well kept throwback to slower paced times, with its beautiful shops and the ‘Diamond’ at its main intersection. New construction in Ligonier is almost exclusively located in the surrounding Ligonier Township, where a handful of estate homes are built each year, and the occasional farm is subdivided to create a new community. Though it’s not obvious from the major roads in and out of Ligonier, there is sufficient demand that 20-25 new homes are started annually.

Westmoreland for the 21st Century
The current slower economy has dampened growth in Westmoreland to the same degree as other parts of metropolitan Pittsburgh. Because the county’s housing market is so dominated by custom builders who build less than fifteen houses per year, the pace of new construction tends to slow very quickly behind the perception of a tighter overall economy. For homeowners, this dynamic is a very good thing, since the quick decline in new construction prevents inventories from growing and depressing home values.

“The builders in Westmoreland County have reacted quickly to the market and have created a great situation for buyers,” notes Walt Winkowski of Prudential Preferred Realty. “While the new construction prices have held pretty firm, the builders are willing to help buyers gain some extra advantages by helping buy down mortgages even further, or by including neighborhood association dues in the closing.”

Winkowski likes the market conditions in the county at the moment, and is concerned that too many buyers are waiting for that ‘right time’ to jump in. “The unfortunate thing is that a lot of buyers are listening to the news and think there should be these once-in-a-lifetime deals out there, when the reality is that the value of the new homes are holding up,” he says. “If you have good credit, there is mortgage money out there. And the timing is really good for value, because the (Westmoreland) builders are using much better materials, and more energy efficient measures than even just a few years ago. It’s a great time to buy new.”

Regardless of short term business cycles, the economic leaders in Westmoreland County remain intent on their long-term strategy of creating desirable industrial sites that will attract lasting employers, particularly in emerging technologies. A recent example of how that approach pays off is the Sony plant shutdown. The site was once one of the largest plants in Westmoreland County, but Sony began downsizing employment several years ago. By the time the last layoffs were announced, the county had already filled a significant portion of the original facility, and had prospects for the balance. The IDC used the intermodal transportation facilities at the site to attract natural gas service company Baker Hughes to build a new 85,000 square foot plant and office, and expects to attract other similar businesses in the near future. A potential negative story had been turned into a potential net gain because the leadership reacted quickly and planned well for the eventual outcome.

Don’t expect a temporary slowdown to change the course of Westmoreland County’s development. It’s one of the greenest counties in the state, yet life in Westmoreland offers access to great schools, a big city and spectacular recreational facilities. All those amenities haven’t escaped the notice of business.

“All the commercial buildings and businesses that have popped up along Route 30 tell me something,” notes Coldwell Banker’s Bill Dietrich. “Those businesses weren’t built for the people who were already in there; it was for the prospect of growth in the future.” NH