"This has to be a place for the community," Joe Hunt said, looking at a portrait of his son. "That's what we want. Whether you come in to have a beer and watch games or have a nice meal with your family and friends."
The portrait hangs above the bar at Perrytown Tap House, 1002 Perry Highway. Jason Hunt, Joe's son, spent months turning the building into the place his father now runs. He died in his sleep on December 30, a heart attack at 42, while the renovation was still weeks from finished. His best friend, Steve Cannone, left his job at Shorty's Pins x Pints on the North Shore in January and partnered with Joe to open it anyway. It opened that September, about a mile and a half from Ross Park Mall.
That's a specific story about one bar. It's also the clearest evidence of something bigger about how this township actually works.
A Building That Refuses to Become Something Else
Before it was a tavern, the building at 1002 Perry Highway was a funeral home. Before that, it was one of the area's first general stores for horses and merchandise. Somewhere along the way it became Perrytowne Tavern, then Perrytowne Drafthouse, a fixture generations of North Hills residents drank at before it closed. The Hunt family bought it in 2022 with Jason, who'd worked there as a bartender, driving the plan to bring it back.
What Cannone and the Hunts built isn't a copy of the old bar. The new U-shaped bar incorporates pieces of the original. The tin ceiling and woodwork got restored rather than ripped out. A black-and-white photograph of the building in its general-store days hangs above the fireplace. The menu keeps a Reuben as a nod to the old Draft House, alongside New York strip steaks and a house cocktail called Jay's Orange Crush, named for Jason: Jameson Orange, triple sec, orange juice, soda, garnished with an orange wedge.
Two years later, the bar isn't a novelty opening anymore. It's a place with a regular Friday and Saturday happy hour, a Sunday morning breakfast crowd, and a menu that's already been updated once. It has settled into the neighborhood the same way its building always has, by becoming whatever Ross needed it to be next.
The Other Perry Highway Story: Chains That Come and Go
Compare that to the corridor a mile and a half away. Ross Park Mall and the McKnight Road strip around it run on a different rhythm. Bonefish Grill, Bravo Italian Kitchen, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, and Ruscello inside Nordstrom all cluster there, national and regional chains occupying built-for-purpose retail space. Back in 2017, Ross Township commissioners approved a Panda Express for the Ross Towne Center plaza, a 2,200-square-foot building constructed in front of a shuttered discount supermarket. More recently, Fajita Pete's spent nearly a year between its announcement and its opening at The Block Northway before finally serving its first fajitas.
None of that is a knock on the mall corridor. It's just a different kind of neighborhood infrastructure. Those tenants fill vacant footprints and move on when a lease ends or a concept doesn't work. The building stays generic so the business inside it can change. Perry Highway runs the opposite way: the business changes so the building can stay.
What the Township Actually Spends Its Park Money On
Ross Township's approach to its parks follows the same logic. The 2026 township budget commits $295,000 to park improvement projects, and none of it is going toward building something new. It's going to a new parking lot at Windhorst Park, gabion baskets and a footbridge at Evergreen Park, and a playground replacement at Scharmyn Park. Another $5,000 is earmarked specifically for trail projects. This is a township reinvesting in the same handful of neighborhood parks residents already use, not chasing a flagship attraction.
North Park operates on the same principle, just at a much larger scale. Allegheny County's largest park, at over 3,000 acres, it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression and established in 1927. Nearly a century later, its 75-acre lake still anchors the neighborhood's outdoor routine, ringed by a five-mile paved Lake Shore Loop that fills with walkers, runners, and cyclists once the weather turns. Beyond the lake, more than 40 miles of multi-use trail wind through the park, along with an off-leash dog park and the Latodami Environmental Education Center. None of it is new. All of it still works.
What's Actually Open Right Now
For a resident planning the next few weekends, the two geographies coexist rather than compete:
- Perry Highway spine: Perrytown Tap House for a Friday happy hour or Sunday breakfast, inside a building that's outlasted three different businesses.
- Ross Park Mall corridor: Bonefish Grill, Bravo Italian Kitchen, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, and Ruscello for a reliable dinner reservation, plus Fajita Pete's at The Block Northway for Tex-Mex.
- North Park: the Lake Shore Loop for a fall run, the off-leash dog park, or the Latodami Environmental Education Center for a slower afternoon.
- Ross Community Park: the township's own recreation calendar runs pickleball sessions, Zumba, Mahjongg, and a long-running line dancing class taught by instructor JoAnn Garver, all inside the Community Center.
Neither corridor is trying to be the other. That's the point. A township this size doesn't need every business to be a legacy institution to feel stable. It needs enough of them to be.
The Six Weeks Ahead
Ross Township's trick-or-treat night falls on October 31 from 6 to 8 p.m., the same window the township has used for years, and it's worth building a fall weekend around it if you haven't already: a lake loop at North Park in the afternoon while the leaves are turning, dinner on Perry Highway or the mall corridor depending on the mood, then Halloween itself closing out the season.
None of this requires a decision about where to live. It's just what's actually happening in Ross Township this fall, and why a bar with a portrait above it says more about the neighborhood's character than any single opening ever could.
If you're weighing a move into Ross Township, or you already live here and want a straight read on what a specific block or listing is actually worth, Nate Nieland can walk you through it with the same local detail as everything above. Book an appointment when you're ready to talk specifics.
