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The cranes that have migrated to Pittsburgh in the last few years are not ornithological. Instead, the city has seen an influx of construction cranes that dot the skyline, moving from one location to the next.
An example of that is the UPMC building boom.
The new UPMC Mercy Pavilion in Uptown is a nine-story addition to UPMC Mercy Hospital that specializes in vision and rehabilitation care. It was designed by HOK and opened in the spring of 2023.
Now that the Mercy project is complete, the medical center is expanding UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Oakland with a 17-story glass tower that will rise 300 feet above Fifth Avenue on the property that once housed Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
The bulk of the new building will be almost kidney-shaped with a convex curve on the west side (facing Downtown) and two bulging curves that meet in the middle along Desoto Street to the east, with pointed ends on the north and south.
At the 2022 groundbreaking for the new tower, Sandy Rader, president of UPMC Shadyside, said the new tower would “change the look of Oakland.”
The wall of glass, which UPMC’s website says will “offset the weight of its 17 stories, will also offer a clear view of what’s happening inside its first few floors, making it feel part of the community.”
The first three stories will have a limestone facade and will house the “lifestyle village,” building mechanicals, a loading dock and the entrance to the 450-space parking garage that will extend four stories underground.
The new hospital tower is intended mostly for transplant, heart and vascular, and neurological care. The $1.5 billion, 1.2 million-square-foot building is expected to open in 2026.
The expansion is designed by HGA architects.
UPMC is also planning a 50,000-square-foot addition to UPMC Children’s Hospital for a new heart institute. The construction, which would close 45th Street for a year, received Planning Commission approval in July. The addition is to cover about half of the hospital’s garage on 45th Street.
HGA Architects and Engineers are working on the expansion.
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The cranes have migrated from the corner of Washington Place and Bedford Avenue where the steel and facade of the First National Bank headquarters is now complete. The 26-story, $220 million tower, on which construction began in 2021, still has an extensive punch list to complete. Then the bank’s executives will move into their new headquarters in the area that everyone calls the Lower Hill District but is technically part of the Central Business District. Gensler is the project architect.
In the Middle Hill District, the redevelopment of New Granada Square hit a milestone in August when 40 units of affordable housing opened with a special rental preference for artists with a connection to the Black community. When completed, the development will also have restaurants, office space and the new New Granada Theater. Perfido Weiskopf Wagstaff + Goettel are the architects.
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In Shadyside, the new parking garage is now standing near the corner of Ellsworth Street and Shady Avenue, the site of Echo Realty’s redevelopment of the Shady Hill Plaza, formerly home to the Shakespeare Street Giant Eagle. Echo, which is the real estate side of Giant Eagle, is planning to replace the store, which has been demolished, with a 36,000-square-foot store that will open onto Penn Avenue.
The developer will also build 38,200 square feet of retail space for a line of stores along Shady Avenue. The company is topping those stores with five stories of apartments — 230 units, with 15% of them priced as affordable housing.
Strada is the architect of the mixed-use project, known as Meridian.
That project does not include the adjacent Shady Avenue Presbyterian Church property, where a historic church was demolished by Beatrice ICON development. Historic preservationists tried to save the church, which ICON argued was too dilapidated to restore. The developer is planning to sell the land to a bank for redevelopment.
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The demolition of the old New Federal Cold Storage Building with the Wholey’s fish image (Wholey mackerel?) on the side is complete. Site preparation is underway for a new 23-story office building with ground-floor retail along Smallman Street.
Dubbed 1501 Penn, the new building has been revised from a glass box office building to one with multiple levels and green roofs. The Smallman Street side of the building will have bleacher-style steps and seating that is wheelchair accessible.
Brandon Haw Architecture is designing the project.
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Hazlewood Green, at 178 acres, is the largest single development site in the city.
The University of Pittsburgh has started construction on BioForge, an 82,000-square-foot laboratory building there for gene and cell therapy. Architecture firm HOK is designing the project.
Carnegie Mellon University is developing a 150,000-square-foot center for robotics and artificial intelligence.
The newest development will be housing.
At a Dec. 12 meeting of the Hazelwood Initiative, Austin Gelbard, managing director of Tishman Speyer, the developer of Hazelwood Green, said that TREK Development was working on a plan for a 50-unit apartment building on Lytle Street.
According to the Hazelwood Homepage, the new apartment building will be the first in the development and have four floors of apartments and “active ground-floor amenities including a flexible workspace focused on electronic resources that could also serve as a small classroom. It will have a fitness facility, bike storage and a children’s play area with an adjoining outdoor playground. Each floor will have a trash and recycling room; laundry facilities will be on-site. Six of the units will be accessible for people with mobility, hearing or vision disabilities. Water and sewage costs will be covered by the owner, but each tenant will pay for their other utilities.”
The first apartment building is part of a three-phase program to build housing on the site; 37 of the 50 units will be designated at various levels of affordability.
Gelbard said this first building will have one- and two-bedroom units with three-bedroom apartments being considered for future phases of residential development.
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The largest single construction project is out of sight of all but those traveling in and out of, or working at, Pittsburgh International Airport.
The $1.4 billion Terminal Modernization Program is building a new 811,000-square-foot building to replace what is now the Landside building. The new building will eliminate the need for the people movers between the Landside and Airside buildings. The airport terminal that opened 30 years ago was designed with the airside building forming a large X when seen from above. The airport apron was built around the entire building so that planes could park on both sides of all four arms of the building.
When USAir, for which the building was designed, moved its hub to Charlotte, North Carolina, Allegheny County was left with a nearly empty airport that the Allegheny County Airport Authority was left struggling to both lease and maintain.
The new facility reduces the number of gates by a quarter because the new terminal will be snug to two arms of the X.
The new terminal building will contain airport and airline offices, ticketing, baggage claim, the security checkpoint and concessions.
A new approach road and parking garage are being constructed for the terminal modernization to accommodate the new location of the landside facility.
The new garage will have three times the covered parking that was available in the garage it is replacing. The previous garage started to sag and needed repairs within a few years of its 1992 opening.
Gensler + HDR, in association with luis vidal + architects, are working on the project.
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