When it comes to assessing the current prospects of Pittsburgh International Airport more than a year after Covid-19 grounded so much of the airline industry, Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis said things are starting to look up.

“It says a lot that people can see the parking lots are filling up and that’s really good news for us,” she said.

And while the airport itself has been forced into a slump of canceled flights and limited air traffic due to the pandemic, the airport area around Pittsburgh International Airport continues to take off with ongoing development activity.

Development in the airport area was the subject of discussion at Corridors of Opportunity, a quarterly event by the Pittsburgh Business Times. In a panel discussion led by Pittsburgh Business Times Publisher Evan Rosenberg, Cassotis was joined by Chris Howard, president of Robert Morris University; Lou Oliva, executive managing director of the Pittsburgh office of Newmark; and Brandon Snyder, vice president and Pittsburgh market leader of Al. Neyer.

All represent busy companies and institutions active in and around the airport, especially in the realm of industrial property development, a hot real estate sector amid the pandemic.

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One of the busiest places in the region for new development right now is the new industrial development around the airport, whether it’s the airport authority’s new Neighborhood 91 plan to build out a hub of additive manufacturing to a host of major new buildings developed by clients of Oliva or by Snyder’s firm, Al. Neyer.

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Some of that has come from a busy Al. Neyer, a Cincinnati-based developer that keeps adding additional projects to sites within the Clinton Commerce Park, a planned property of the airport authority.

The firm currently has a 400,000-square-foot facility completed for a tenant that has yet to be announced.

“We’ve been successful at the Clinton Commerce Park leasing buildings ranging between 200,000 and 300,000 square feet, so we think that’s the right size for this market at this time,” Snyder said.