Steel Company may move TO Pittsburgh

[tooluther]

Sorry, I haven't been able to post in a while given potential conflict of interests with a variety of projects and clients I'm currently involved with (one of which I'll finally be able to reveal to you all hopefully at the end of next week!).

That being said, I couldn't pass up any longer pointed out that you missed the exciting possibility presented in the Biz times a couple weeks ago about Esmark Inc. investigating moving its headquarters from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

They are looking at Pittsburgh in light of their upcoming take over of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, and the fact that their CEO actually LIVES in Sewickly and commutes to Chicago.

Esmark's plan is to go public by next year...a move which would place them in the Fortune 500...when was the last time a F500 company moved TO Pittsburgh rather than FROM it!

We still have to beat Chicago and Wheeling as potential relocation sites, but Esmark has apparently been shopping sites in Downtown Pittsburgh and Moon. They are looking for 75,000 S.F. which would be a huge boon to the soft office market. A quote in the Biz times sums up out chances very well :

"I'm almost positive they couldn't find the space in Wheeling," Harrigan said. "They could in Chicago, but they'd probably wind up paying twice as much."

The County Executive has apparently been very active in swaying their decision...given the recent win with Westinghouse, this would be another nice card for him to hold as a future Gov. candidate.

Sorry for the long post, but I think its very exciting news!

[Evergrey]

yes... I read about this... I'd rather they move to Wheeling than Cranberry though

[NewBurgh]

Downtown would be ideal. Any ideas on what this would mean for the city in terms of jobs? Or maybe for attracting other businesses?

I don't know much about this and was wondering how big of a deal you guys think this would be and what kind of tangible impact this move would have for our economy.

[Evergrey]

well... the HQ would potentially be in Pittsburgh... the nearest steel mill would be in Wheeling... former Wheeling-Pitt also has some sort of secondary facility somewhere in the Mid-Mon Valley... Esmark attempted to buy Weirton Steel but that deal fell through... not sure what other production facilities Esmark has...

I believe I read their HQ would have like 75 employees initially... but they're looking for enough space to accomodate significant expansion in the near term

IF Esmark reaches their lofty growth goals... they claim they can be a Fortune 500 in 18 months

[TheGerbil]

Thank you for pointing this out to us. I wish I could still read the Business Times online for free

This would certainly be nice for the city. It would make up for the "loss" of Mellon, in terms of how many Fortune 500s we have. (Assuming it all goes as planned, anyway).

[Evergrey]

Speaking of Fortune 500 HQ's... Pittsburgh now has another... Allegheny Technologies has risen from #536 to #455. Pittsburgh went from 6 Fortune 500s to 7... which is where we were before Alain Belda's stealthy relocation of Alcoa to NYC. However, we will once again fall down to 6 again when Mellon is finally devoured by Bank of New York later this year. All of our Fortune 500s moved up on the list with the exception of Heinz, which fell a modest 7 places, indicating strong performance amongst all of our major stalwarts. U.S. Steel topped our list at #147. NYC-based Alcoa is #71.