Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Focus on Astorino: Firm builds growing reputation and business
By Bill Toland
May 06, 2007

A Pittsburgh company knows it has reached a certain level of civic importance when the widows of Fred Rogers and Gene Kelly are bumping into each other in its office hallways. They'd never met before, Joanne Rogers and Patricia Ward Kelly, despite being married to Pennsylvania-born entertainment icons, but their paths finally crossed last year in the studios of Astorino, a Downtown architecture and design firm.

Both women are planning separate projects, honoring their husbands, with Astorino's guidance. The meeting was a scheduling quirk -- one was on her way in, another on her way out of the Fort Pitt Boulevard headquarters -- but there it was, a brief intersection in their lives that led to a chat of 20 minutes. "They just had a wonderful time," said Chief Executive Officer Dennis Astorino, marveling at the meet-up. "It was kind of fun to watch. It was just happenstance."

Happenstance, maybe, but it's no anomaly that Astorino should be entertaining such local VIPs in its offices. Fred Rogers, Joe Paterno, Chip Ganassi, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. and many more have passed through these doors, soliciting Astorino's services on one project or another. Mr. Astorino and his older brother, Lou, who founded the company and remains chairman, have slowly built a two-man shop into a 200-employee firm.

In the process, though it's not a household name such as Heinz or Alcoa, Astorino has left its footprint on New Pittsburgh and the region in way that can be matched by only a few area engineering, contracting and architectural heavies -- Michael Baker, Dick Corp., Mascaro Construction and Burt Hill.

"Lou is an extremely good self-promoter," said an admiring Paul Apostolou, head of Mount Washington's Apostolou Associates Inc., a friendly rival of Astorino's (Apostolou was one of several designers hired for the Petersen Events Center project, an assignment Astorino had sought). "Very well-connected .... I think that they've done a marvelous job in building that company."

A decade ago, Astorino hit a growth spurt as revenue climbed 82 percent over a three-year period. In 2000, one industry publication identified Astorino, formerly L.D. Astorino and Associates, as the 30th-fastest growing architecture firm in the country. After that, the growth leveled a bit. The company reported revenue crept from $21 million in 1999 to $26 million in 2005, corresponding with the national economy's slump and regional construction slowdown. Astorino has added about 30 employees since 2000, though most are in the company's new Florida offices.

But the connections Mr. Apostolou mentioned -- not to mention Astorino's ability to complete the work it's hired to do -- have helped Astorino expand into the second-largest architecture firm in the region behind Burt Hill. Today, the company is at the front edge of another period of growth. Its 2006 total revenue of nearly $30 million was up $4 million, or 15 percent, from 2005.

"We have close to a billion dollars' worth of work under construction, which is pretty phenomenal," Mr. Astorino said. He ticked off a list of local projects now under way for which Astorino has either done design work or at least drawn up blueprints -- the Downtown PNC skyscraper, new construction for the Veterans Administration in O'Hara, labs for Allegheny County and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Magee-Womens Hospital, luxury condos in Shadyside and the new Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in Lawrenceville, a $575 million project and the biggest ever undertaken by Astorino.

If Astorino were a hot up-and-coming firm in the late 1990s -- on the heels of its PNC Park drawings, the construction of a state prison in Somerset and the ground-up development of the Pirates' spring training home, McKechnie Field in Bradenton, Fla. -- it's now part of the Pittsburgh establishment, with eyes on becoming a major player outside of the city. And it's the company's expertise in hospital construction that may lead to bigger things yet -- a much-sought international presence for Astorino, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year.

Mr. Astorino said the company is in serious discussions about an expansion into China, and already is designing one hospital there. Mr. Astorino, during the course of an hour-long interview last week, also said the company is looking at expanding into the Middle East, as well as India. (Burt Hill, incidentally, opened its own international office, in India, a few weeks ago).

"Our health-care group is so strong, that's one of the main focuses, [to] take our health care internationally," Mr. Astorino said. The company's first foray into foreign hospitals was a UPMC transplant lab in Italy. Astorino's hospital and lab work has since been growing steadily, and that's thanks to the purchase, a dozen years ago, of a firm that specialized in hospital design.

Today, 60 percent of Astorino's design work is health-related. That hospital expertise has developed methodically, as has the company as a whole, purchasing three smaller design firms over the years. "When we were ready to grow, we grew," Mr. Astorino said. The company was founded in 1972, and for the first two decades, tried to get the attention of capital investors and builders in the region.

"When you start out, [you] knew you had ability, you knew you could do a job. But trying to convince somebody, they would always ask you, 'Well, show me some of the work you've done before,' " said Mr. Astorino, who came aboard in 1976. "Sometimes it's difficult to get recognized as an expert in your own community." There's always the perception that "somebody from New York is going to do it better."

And now?

"If you look at the history in the last 10 years of the major work in Pittsburgh, we've certainly had the lion's share," Mr. Astorino said. The company is now one of the top 100 architecture firms in the United States in total revenue, according to industry journal Architectural Record.

The company's friendly relationships with Pittsburgh businessman John E. Connelly and PNC Financial Services Group have proven lucrative, especially the PNC ties.

Astorino won a design competition to draw up the plans for Downtown's PNC Firstside Center, at First Avenue and Grant Street, and since has done other work for PNC. The company designed a PNC office building in Delaware, and Three PNC Plaza, the high-rise now under construction between Liberty Avenue and Market Square, is the latest collaboration between the bank and the architectural firm. (Astorino is doing construction blueprints for the tower, while Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the United States, came up with the actual design renderings.)

"They're very gifted designers," said Gary Saulson, corporate real estate director at PNC. "They've designed some of the most iconic buildings in Pittsburgh," including Firstside.

PNC Firstside "was a poster child nationally for green architecture," Mr. Astorino said. It won several design awards, including a silver medal from LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. At one time, about five years ago, Astorino was one of the top five architects nationally in terms of the total square footage of environmentally friendly LEED-certified buildings it had designed. Astorino also is utilizing what it calls "deep design" -- extracting a developer's true wishes for the look and feel of a project, since that sort of thing can be difficult to articulate.

There are more high-profile projects in the pipeline. Astorino is on board for the development of the old Nabisco plant in East Liberty, which plans call for conversion into new retail, office and housing space. The project, to be called Bakery Square, also is to be the beneficiary of Astorino's green design expertise. Demolition for the project began last week, with Walnut Capital serving as the financier of that project as well as The Metropolitan condos in Shadyside.

"Both Lou and Dennis understand what people in Pittsburgh like," said Todd Reidbord, president and principal with Walnut. The Walnut team, for example, went into The Metropolitan design sessions with Astorino thinking that luxury condo buyers would prefer a traditional brick look. But "what people wanted was more contemporary," he said, with lots of glass. The six-story building will be completed this summer, and pre-sales are at 60 percent.

"That's really a tribute to the design," Mr. Reidbord said. "Most of the people have purchased off the plan."

Astorino also may be tapped to team with sports-venue specialists HOK to design a replacement for Mellon Arena. Those discussions are under way, but not finalized. HOK was lead designer on PNC Park, as well, while Astorino was the local designer, serving as the architect of record.

The variety of projects undertaken these days -- hospitals, prisons, condos, single-family homes, ballparks, not to mention loads of interior design work -- means employees, current and prospective ones, shouldn't get bored any day soon. At least, that's what Mr. Astorino hopes.

"We want to attract young people to our city. In our profession, one of the things any young person is going to want to know is, 'What kind of projects am I going to work on?' " Mr. Astorino said. "We're going to get work around the world. And we're going to do it here," in Pittsburgh.

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