As Burns & Scalo Roofing marks 70 years in business, John Scalo is taking over as president, becoming the third generation of his family to lead the Pittsburgh company. His father, Jack Scalo, will shift away from daily operations and focus on strategy, client relationships and the company’s advisory board.
For John Scalo, the transition follows a lifetime around the business.
“This is the only thing I’ve ever thought about doing my entire life,” he said. “As a little kid, it was going to job sites on the way to hockey practice and climbing the ladder to see what the guys were doing. Then, at 13, I got tapped on the shoulder and told, ‘You’re starting work this summer at the company.’ I worked every summer after that until I graduated college,
really working from the ground up.”
The change at Burns & Scalo comes amid a wider Pittsburgh challenge: keeping aging buildings viable. A recentUSA Todayreport on the conversion of the 124-year-old Smithfield Lofts building illustrates the stakes. The $30 million project will turn a former downtown office tower into 46 apartments, including 39 income-restricted units—an example of how preserving and repurposing older structures is part of the region’s affordability strategy
Burns & Scalo, which began as a residential roofer and has expanded into commercial roofing, exterior metal panels and solar, fits into that reality as a contractor working on the building envelope: the systems that keep water, wind and weather out. John Scalo recalled that after severe winds damaged Fiori’s Pizza, the company mobilized about 30 workers to rebuild its roof deck and install a temporary roof so the restaurant could reopen the next day.
Jack Scalo said the company’s future rests on understanding the physical work behind that response.
“You want to learn the entire business from the ground up, but you also need to gain the respect of the workers,” he said. “They need to know you’re willing to do the same work they do—that you understand how hot it gets, how cold it gets and how physical it is. You have to walk the talk.”
In Pittsburgh, where affordability increasingly depends not only on building new homes but also on preserving existing ones, roof repair and building maintenance are part of the larger infrastructure conversation.
This article by Gabby Sartori was created with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: As Pittsburgh’s buildings age, Burns & Scalo enters a new era
