Mt. Lebanon Office Furniture property for sale
A building on Banksville Road in the city’s South Hills that for decades housed Mt. Lebanon Office Furniture & Interiors is on the market.
But the company that acquired the family-owned business in 2019 still operates — despite the COVID19 pandemic that sent many office workers home and wiped out much of the demand for workplace furnishings.
“The pandemic obviously created a different mindset … and a paradigm shift to work-from-home solutions,” said Dwayne Deal, division vice president-contract furniture for HiTouch Business Services, which now owns the property.
“We’re still fully operational,” Mr. Deal said.
Mt. Lebanon Office, founded in 1960, was owned and operated by members of the Droney family until 2018, when they quietly sold it to another family-owned Pittsburgh company, Bulldog Office Products.
Bulldog in 2019 sold the combined business to HiTouch, a Tennessee-based company owned by office supplies giant Staples.
The Droneys still own the Banksville Road property and when HiTouch’s lease expires later this year, the company plans to consolidate all of its 30 employees in the Pittsburgh market at Bulldog’s site on Glass Road in Robinson, Mr. Deal said.
Longer term, it hopes to add employees locally and relocate to another “accessible, high-profile, high-traffic area,” he said.
Mt. Lebanon Office has been a landmark on busily traveled Banksville Road since it moved into the 20,000-square-foot structure, which once housed a burial vault manufacturer.
James Droney Sr. and Mike Silvestre launched the company on Alfred Street near the Mt. Lebanon business district for typewriter sales and repairs.
After Mr. Droney’s son, Jim, and his wife, Rosemary, joined the business in the 1970s, it began diversifying into office furniture and eventually built a long list of prominent clients, including the Pittsburgh Penguins — for which it designed offices and private suites at PPG
PPG Paints Arena — Downtown law firm Jones Day, and Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne and Point Park universities.
The company designed space and supplied furnishings for the Pittsburgh PostGazette newsroom when it relocated from Downtown to the North Shore in 2015.
HiTouch invested in the combined Bulldog and Mt. Lebanon Office, Mr. Deal said, “because obviously they had a very good market share in counties surrounding Pittsburgh, as well as a good presence in West Virginia.”
“They were very profitable and had a very good network of clients,” he said.
He declined to disclose how much HiTouch paid for the business.
After Mt. Lebanon Office was sold to Bulldog, Jim Droney left the business and is now working in business development at the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence. He is also a consultant for nonprofits, including Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania and Goodwill Industries.
Rosemary Droney remained with the company and now works for HiTouch.
Family members declined to discuss the sale of their business and the Mt. Lebanon Office property, citing nondisclosure agreements.
Mr. Deal described HiTouch, which generated about $290 million in sales last year, as a “total office solutions provider” with divisions that sell office products, furniture, space planning and design, printing services, hardware and software technology, cleaning services and coffee supplies.
When the pandemic hit, many clients needed to purchase workstations and furniture for people who were suddenly working from home, Mr. Deal said.
A division that supplies school equipment experienced demand for three-sided privacy shields to wrap around students’ desks.
Its health care unit “was inundated with orders for masks, surgical gowns and gloves,” Mr. Deal said.
It continues to supply hand sanitizers and disinfectants to all industries.
“So that made up lots of the deficits in other business segments,” he said.
As the COVID-19 vaccine reaches more people and as companies consider bringing workers back to offices, HiTouch expects customers will need its services to reconfigure space for a safe environment, Mr. Deal said.
The Mt. Lebanon Office property was listed for sale last year at $1.65 million.
Darin Shriver, vice president for real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield/ Grant Street Associates, which is the listing agent, said the one-story building has generated interest and offers mainly from buyers who would make it a warehouse or distribution site.
Built in 1972, the structure sits on 1.6 acres along a stretch that — pre-pandemic — provided exposure to over 18,000 cars daily, according to the property listing. “For a family business, that’s the dream,” Mr. Shriver said of Mt. Lebanon Office.
“You operate a business and own the real estate. Then you have options to sell the business and the new company leases from you. If things change, you still have options. Selling the business and now the property is the option [the Droneys] considered.”