Chloe Jad
Chloe Jad connects real estate development with the broader business forces of technology, retail and the future of work, treating physical projects as economic stories rather than isolated deals. She is a business reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette focusing on retail, technology and artificial intelligence, and she applies that lens to coverage of major sites and investments across her region. Her real estate reporting concentrates on development projects, industrial properties and large-scale retail expansion, with close attention to jobs, unions and how communities adapt to changing industry. Alongside those pieces, she covers artificial intelligence, manufacturing and workforce initiatives, giving her file a consistent through-line: who builds, who works there and how new technologies reshape that balance.
Development, Industrial Sites and Real Estate Projects
Jad’s real estate coverage focuses on large, complex projects where land, capital and local history intersect. In her report on the Brickworks residential development in the Strip District, she tracks a $100 million plan to turn a 1.75-acre industrial site into a mix of rental units, for-sale townhomes and amenity-heavy housing, emphasising the scale of construction, union labor and the transformation of a former warehouse landscape. Her story on a former Corelle Brands glass plant in Charleroi follows the trajectory from a long-serving industrial anchor that closed in 2025 to a now-marketed site, detailing how brokers are courting replacement users and how access to major highways shapes its appeal to investors. Coverage of the planned Meijer store in Cranberry Township fits the same pattern, treating a single retail project as part of a broader development and infrastructure narrative rather than a standalone opening. Across these pieces, she consistently situates properties within their past use, current market positioning and potential to bring new employment, framing real estate as an economic engine with winners and losers.
Retail Expansion and the Regional Food Economy
Retail and food-sector investments are another recurring thread, and she treats them as both real estate deals and supply-chain stories.
Her reporting on Chobani’s new Pennsylvania plant highlights the reuse of a 1.5 million-square-foot former Keurig Dr Pepper facility, the projected 900 direct jobs over five years and the aim to add 3 billion pounds of milk processing capacity to the state’s existing output, underlining how one facility changes regional production at scale. In parallel, her coverage of grocery expansion, including Meijer’s push into Cranberry Township, fits into a broader “grocery wars” narrative she tracks, where national and regional chains compete over store locations, distribution infrastructure and customer bases. These stories sit at the junction of real estate and retail strategy: she reports on square footage, site access and transaction details, but her emphasis is on how these moves reconfigure the food market, affect local suppliers and create or shift employment.
Artificial Intelligence, Manufacturing and the Future of Work
Jad’s technology reporting zeroes in on artificial intelligence as a practical tool for industry rather than an abstract concept. Her piece on Shelfmark, an Uptown company using AI to detect anomalies on manufacturing lines, explains how real-time analytics can speed production and reduce waste, tying the software directly to plant-floor operations and investor interest. She covers major AI gatherings in the city, including an AI Horizons summit where leaders oscillate between optimism and concern over AI’s societal impact, and earlier coverage of efforts to craft a cohesive AI strategy that positions the region as a physical “epicenter” for the technology.
In a story about the NFL Draft coming to town, she shows the local tech community pitching the city as an AI hub to visiting stakeholders, linking the event to a longer-term push to attract capital and talent. Another feature on an Air Force “Innovation Open House” details how defense needs align with local startups, illustrating her habit of connecting national institutions to regional labs and offices.
She also reports on students showcasing AI creations, underscoring how education pipelines and youth experimentation feed into the future workforce she follows in her business and development pieces.
Workforce, Education and Enforcement with Economic Stakes
Beyond deals and technology, Jad frequently covers labor, training and enforcement when they carry economic implications.
Her report on the Labor Day Parade highlights union participation, unfinished bargaining priorities and policy debates around parental leave and workforce standards, casting the march as a snapshot of current labor relations rather than a ceremonial event. In her coverage of Steel Center technical school’s reopening, she focuses on timing, the role of vocational education and the importance of getting facilities online before the school year, showing how training infrastructure underpins the skilled trades needed for both development and manufacturing. She also writes on narcotics and THC product trafficking, documenting large seizures, indictments and what officials describe as an “epidemic” of youth poisoning, framing these stories around public safety, regulatory pressure and their ripple effects on communities and local economies.
Across these varied assignments, she keeps returning to how institutions - unions, schools, law enforcement and companies - shape everyday working conditions and prospects, tying them back to the physical places and industries she covers on her real estate and business beat.
4 more real estate journalists.
Aaron Elstein
Aaron Elstein brings a Wall Street reporter’s eye to commercial real estate. He is a senior reporter at Crain’s New York Business, where he covers large office towers, Midtown corridors, landlords, lenders, investors and regulators. His reporting shows how ownership decisions, bank balance sheets, capital markets and regulation shape property values and risk. He also covers banking, finance and Wall Street, including bank mergers and investment firms. Before joining Crain’s in 2003, he wrote Heard on the Street columns for The Wall Street Journal and covered bank mergers for American Banker. Elstein reports by closely reading footnotes, contracts, regulatory filings and legal documents. His investigative work has examined executive payments, pension funds, tax enforcement and tenant harassment. His coverage places deals, disputes and enforcement actions within broader financial and property cycles.
Aaron Moselle
Aaron Moselle covers housing and community development for WHYY’s PlanPhilly, filing for radio and the web. He stands out for connecting market data and government action to displacement, affordable homes, and the daily questions facing renters and homeowners. His core beat is housing affordability and market strain, including high mortgage rates, rising prices, tax assessments, and what they mean for buyers, sellers, and renters. He also reports on preserving and creating affordable housing, neighborhood rehab efforts, major real estate deals, and the effect of property sales on residents. His work often uses direct sourcing, plain language, and service journalism to make policy and finance clear.
Aarthi Swaminathan
Aarthi Swaminathan is a personal finance reporter at MarketWatch whose distinctive beat connects residential real estate with household budgets. She covers housing prices, affordability, mortgage rates, financing, insurance, remodeling and the costs of owning a home. Her reporting examines overvalued and fast-rising markets, ZIP-code trends, second-home sellers, builders, developers and buyers facing higher borrowing costs. She also follows Gen Z buyers, owners trapped in weakening condo markets and neighborhood conflicts over development. Her work pairs data-driven housing analysis with detailed case studies of buyers, owners and sellers. She explains complex market data in clear, accessible language and writes news features, personal-finance explainers, Economic Report stories, The Big Move and New American Playbook. She won a silver award for Best Collection of Work by an Individual Covering Residential Real Estate.
Abbey Ferguson
Abbey Ferguson stands out for reporting how major commercial moves and redevelopment plans reshape the built environment, especially the real estate deals that reveal what land and retail space are worth. She covers Central Texas commercial real estate and development for KWTX, with recent stories on land valuation, major transactions, retail redevelopment, and infrastructure planning. Her work has tracked an $80 million data center site offer in Hill County, a prospective Trader Joe’s location in Waco, and a planning project using artificial intelligence to predict traffic patterns. She writes as a news reporter, staying close to the numbers, public records, brokers, officials, and landowners. Her stories turn contract prices, appraisal data, and listing history into plain explanations of what buyers are betting on and how those deals affect surrounding property owners and nearby businesses.