Mar 18, 2019 By Mike Tony mtony@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read

What began the 21st century as a corn field on the South Union Township side of Route 40 is now the Fayette County Business Park, a sprawling 277-acre development holding more than 45 commercial, professional and retail office tenants and generating annual property taxes totaling $1.2 million.

Restaurants like Applebee’s, Sonic Drive-In and IHOP restaurants have helped contribute to the business park’s growth from its beginning, the latter two opening in 2008 – a year after Applebee’s opened.

Chain restaurants have continued to add to what is known as Restaurant Row along Route 40 in South Union Township, from Olive Garden in 2012 to Five Guys in 2015 and Chili’s in 2016.

Now comes Texas Roadhouse, which will soon be opening on the North Union Township side of Route 40 – to be joined by Big Shot Bob’s House of Wings, a southwestern Pennsylvania/northern West Virginia regional chain which will soon add a location in the strip plaza under the Fayette Crossing banner.

Chain restaurants increased by more than 30 percent in Fayette and Washington counties from 2000 to 2015, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) calculations of data from the NPD Group, a global information company.

Fayette County Commissioner Vincent A. Vicites wants area diners to support locally owned and operated restaurants, but he also sensed a niche was left unfilled after South Union Township’s Ponderosa Steakhouse and Golden Corral closed in 2013 and 2016 respectively.

“(W)e’d lost several steakhouses,” Vicites said.

So Vicites worked toward getting a deed restriction lifted at on the property that did not allow for restaurants to be built on the North Union Township side of Route 40, testifying on behalf of property owner and businessman Jim Filiaggi, who filed a successful suit with the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas.

The Fayette County Redevelopment Authority implemented the Fayette County Business Park in conjunction with Fayette County Board of Commissioners and South Union Township, and Akron, Ohio-based Cedarwood Development Inc.

Andrew French, the redevelopment authority’s longtime executive director, said that restaurant chains have been seeking and expanding into secondary markets for continued business growth, helping to explain the proliferation of chain restaurants in lesser populated areas like Fayette County.

“In this area, the chains have always done well,” said Joe Carei, an award-winning chef who previously operated Caleigh’s Restaurant in Uniontown and Pasta Lorenzo in South Union Township.

Like most of western Pennsylvania, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties’ share of chain restaurants among all restaurants in 2015 ranged between 16.9 and 34.4 percent according to ERS calculations of NPD data, still well behind much of Appalachia, where counties frequently had more than 48.5 percent, the low end of ERS’s highest category of chain restaurant share percentage.

Fayette County had 90 full-service and 81 fast-food restaurants in 2014, according to the ERS’s Food Environment Atlas.

Greene County had 26 fast-food and 20 full-service restaurants, Washington County had 135 fast-food and 132 full-service restaurants, and Westmoreland County had 235 fast-food and 270 full-service restaurants. Greene County, meanwhile, had 26 fast-food restaurants.

There were 31 more full-service restaurants and 19 more fast-food restaurants across Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties in 2014 than there were five years earlier, although Fayette’s number of fast-food restaurants decreased by one in that span.

Carei, who now operates Ellie Mae’s Catering and Food Clubs, noted enduring local favorites like Meloni’s Restaurant, Titlow Tavern & Grille, and Caporella’s Italian Ristorante in Uniontown and added that food subscription services such as Blue Apron, a meal kit delivery operation, would continue to appeal to consumers in the future.

“(E)verything comes to you, dropped off at your door,” Carei said. “… People’s time is valuable.”

Carei doesn’t think cooking has become a lost art, either, pointing out that the internet and television have eliminated the challenge of finding the right cookbook that previous generations faced.

“Now you just plug in chicken Marsala (into a search engine), there it is,” Carei said, noting the option of farm-to-table dining as well.

So locals spending their disposable income for a hand-cut steak at Texas Roadhouse or wings at Big Shot Bob’s will do so knowing they’ve got choices, from locally grown corn to drive-in corn dogs where a corn field used to be.

“It seems like our restaurants are all well-attended,” Vicites said. “So that’s a good sign.”