A sinkhole in the parking lot of a Dunkin' on Rodi Road in Penn Hills has been growing for more than a month, exposing old storm drainage beneath the pavement and leaving customers wary of the drive-thru lane. The franchisee that owns the shop says it's already the third sinkhole caused by the same underground piping, and it's now asking the township and the state for help finding a lasting fix.
Customer Angel Jackson first noticed the hole in September and says it has doubled in size since then, according to CBS News. “It was huge,” Jackson said, warning that the opening was large enough that someone's car could fall in. Another customer, Nick Buckshaw, said the hole keeps expanding and poses a particular hazard for drivers exiting the drive-thru, where visibility can already be poor, especially in the mornings.
The Dunkin' location is owned by Heartland Restaurant Group. The company operates roughly 80 Dunkin' locations across three states, according to QSR Magazine. The company says this is the third sinkhole it has had to deal with caused by the piping underneath the property, and it has already spent more than $100,000 repairing other issues tied to the same pipe.
A Pipe Problem With No Easy Fix
The trouble for Heartland sits at the intersection of private property maintenance and public road oversight. Rodi Road is officially Pennsylvania Route 791, a 2.1-mile state-maintained highway running from U.S. Route 22 Business in Churchill to PA Route 380 in Penn Hills, per Wikipedia's entry on the roadway. But PennDOT policy explicitly bars the state agency from spending public funds to repair or improve stormwater infrastructure sitting on private property, leaving driveway pipes and private drainage squarely the responsibility of the property owner.
Spokesperson Mike Zappone said Heartland wants a long-term solution and aims to make the area as safe as possible while working with authorities, according to the station's report. He added that PennDOT is planning a study of the situation, and that Heartland plans to implement additional safety measures starting Wednesday. The company says it remains hopeful it can work with authorities toward a more permanent fix rather than another round of patchwork repairs.
State Money Has Already Flowed to the Corridor
Rodi Road hasn't been ignored by state transportation planners. In December 2025, Pennsylvania awarded Penn Hills Township $3 million through PennDOT's Multimodal Transportation Fund to support street reconstruction and sidewalk improvements along the Rodi Road corridor, per PennDOT. Then in August 2026, the agency awarded the township another $360,142 through its Green Light-Go program to modernize traffic and pedestrian signals at the intersection of Rodi Road and Jefferson Road.
PennDOT also spent considerable time working on the road itself in recent years. In 2025, overnight milling and paving took place along Rodi Road as part of a $70.1 million I-376 Parkway East betterment project, as reported by TribLIVE. Pennsylvania has laws and regulations addressing surface water.
Penn Hills Has Seen Ground Trouble Before
This isn't the first time ground instability has rattled the area. A sinkhole caused by mine subsidence led to a Laketon Road closure in Penn Hills. And Allegheny County's most infamous infrastructure failure came in October 2019, when a 20-foot-deep sinkhole swallowed the back half of a Port Authority transit bus on 10th Street in downtown Pittsburgh — a collapse that took nearly a year and extensive utility work to fully repair, per CBS News.
More recently, severe storms triggered multiple ground collapses across Western Pennsylvania in September, including a storm-driven 40-foot sinkhole in neighboring Washington County caused by flash flooding, according to WGAL News 8. For now, Heartland Restaurant Group says it is pressing ahead with added safety measures at the Penn Hills Dunkin' this week while it waits to see whether the township, PennDOT, and the company can agree on a permanent repair for the pipe beneath the lot.
