SouthSide Works From Brownfield to City Green

[ By Christine Fulton ]

The Flats at SouthSide Works includes 84 loft and flat apartments which are fully leased. American Eagle Outfitters retail store is located on the street level; the national retailer has purchased two office buildings in the mixed-use project for its worldwide headquarters.

Revitalization at its Best
SouthSide Works, a dense urban development, draws visitors and residents to its traditional street grid for shopping, work and entertainment. Outdoor yoga classes, upscale shopping and a riverfront trail through the heart of Pittsburgh are a few of the amenities offered by a thriving neighborhood that welcomes loft dwellers, biotech researchers, artists and shoppers.

SouthSide Works has also drawn support from local civic leaders—government, foundations, community activists, and businesses—whom have helped the Soffer Organization create a hip, vibrant mixed-use riverfront development a mile from downtown Pittsburgh, on the site of a former steel mill.

While SouthSide Works has been developed quickly and successfully, it is not fully complete. In October 2006, eight years after groundbreaking, Soffer proceeded with the remaining riverfront parcels: a 150-room hotel and fitness center, a 10,000-square-foot conference center, the Hofbräuhaus restaurant, 590,000 square feet of Class A office space and two high-rise condominiums along the riverfront. A striking six-acre South Shore Riverfront Park will bring pedestrians from the South Side neighborhood to the riverfront which was inaccessible due to industry for many years. Meanwhile, completed office and retail space and retail are thriving. Over half of the planned one million square feet of office space is completed, at 91 percent occupancy. Three hundred thousand square feet of retail space is 97 percent leased with another 145,000 square feet planned, while lofts and apartments comprising 94,000 square feet are fully occupied.

Fashion and entertainment, including a 10-screen cinema and outdoor dining at all restaurants, pull visitors to Town Square at the center of SouthSide Works. The cinema is above street-level retail and draws both movie-goers and tenants who use the space for presentations and events.

As it moves to completion in 2009, the project honors the neighborhood’s history, character and scale. It incorporates 21st century design and preserves open space along the river. Those quality-of-life features have attracted the region’s young knowledge industries. Pittsburgh has sought to retain graduates of local universities, eight of which are located within five miles of SouthSide Works. The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have established national reputations for organ transplants, cancer care, robotics and biotechnology that have created job opportunities. The average age of the Soffer apartment tenant is 31; they are generally high-income professionals employed by major firms and universities.

The shift from a steel economy to “eds and meds,” a major change for the Pittsburgh region, is mirrored in SouthSide Works’ commercial and residential tenants.

The Brownfield Challenge
The Soffer Organization owns and operates three million square feet of office, retail and residential property in the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Its unusual opportunity at SouthSide Works resulted from the demise of the industry that was synonymous with the region. One major steelmaker, LTV, owned over 300 acres on both banks of the Monongahela River. Eight years after the plant was idled, the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority purchased 110 acres on the banks of the river for $10 million in shared state and local funding. “It’s difficult to find large tracts of shovel-ready land downtown,” observed Jerome Dettore, executive director of the Authority. “Costs for this kind of brownfield development are so much higher that public funding must play a role. We planned it together with Soffer in light of market realities.”

For nearly a century before closing in the mid-1980’s, LTV’s massive steel mills dominated Pittsburgh’s South Side. The remediation of the brownfield site included funding from the Environmental Protection Agency. The bridge across the Monongahela River was re-engineered from rail to vehicular use.

In 1996, the Urban Redevelopment Authority granted Soffer development rights for 34 acres of the LTV site. The first challenge in preparing the site was the obvious environmental degradation. One hundred years of heavy industry left soil and groundwater contamination, subsurface foundations, a steam plant, a pair of unusable bridges and rail lines. The site even had its own underground railroad tunnel which prevented development overhead. Immediately adjacent to the mills was an aging neighborhood on a traditional grid, with numbered streets intersecting East Carson Street. At its peak, the South Side was home to nearly 40,000 immigrants who walked to mill jobs. Now locals describe the neighborhood of 10,000 as having “both kinds of blue hair,” for its retirees and young urban homesteaders. Onion-domed churches, high-density housing and good public transit give it a walkable European character. Neighborhood growth has been organic, fueled by Main Street development grants that helped attract small businesses and nightlife. An active local development corporation was fully involved in the SouthSide Works planning process.

The project also had to comply with ambitious civic design guidelines for high-quality development and smart-growth principles. The non-profit Riverlife Task Force developed construction and access guidelines similar to those adopted in Chicago and elsewhere for riverfront projects, which were adopted by the City Planning Commission. Pittsburgh’s Green Building Alliance encouraged sustainable design solutions and provided expertise on the health, economic, environmental and social value of green design for some SouthSide Works spaces.

Finally, Soffer had to carefully balance national and local merchants. Chairman Damian Soffer’s overriding principle was that the project’s retail offerings should not compete with conventional malls. While Soffer set a goal of bringing to SouthSide Works unique major retailers with no other presence in the western Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Ohio region, he also recognized that homegrown businesses were essential to the mix.

SouthSide Works created intimate courtyards beside Class A office space like Quantum 1. Over six acres of the development is reserved for green space.

Strategic Partnerships Resolve Infrastructure Challenges
An ongoing partnership with the Urban Redevelopment Authority solved major transportation issues and infrastructure for the site. A key 1988 decision was the Authority’s commitment to buy and re-use two bridges entering the site from the Monongahela River for vehicles and recreational use, respectively.

The redesign proved expensive. The original bridges entered the steel mill at the three-story level; a major elevation drop required re-engineering. The price tag for the bridge project, $22 million, was ultimately less than the cost of new construction.

Once vehicles could reach the site, parking needed to be addressed. The Urban Redevelopment Authority built and owns four parking garages (named Ingot, Ladle, Hot Metal and Furnace) adjacent to office towers Quantum I and II and will complete a fifth, for a total of 2,670 parking spaces in secure lots. TIF agreements through 2020 with three taxing bodies allowed up to 60 percent of real estate taxes to be diverted for infrastructure, roads and parking structures. Up to $25 million in value can be financed. Minimum tax payment agreements were also forged.

The Master Plan
To extend and revitalize the local business district, SouthSide Works’ master planners created an uninterrupted flow between the existing South Side neighborhood and the new development. Development Design Group of Baltimore and Environmental Planning and Design of Pittsburgh followed a plan drafted by RTKL of Dallas that kept the authentic street grid, but incorporated open space on every block between East Carson Street and the river. Sight lines to the river extend from East Carson Street from 26th Street to 29th Street.

Soffer hired 12 local architects and planners for the nine blocks of the project. They integrated new construction with the 19th century facades along East Carson Street. A 10-screen cinema sits above street-level retail on the Town Square, facing an open public space with gardens and an interactive fountain.

Major education and research institutions near SouthSide Works created leasing momentum. The main campuses of the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon University are five minutes away, and their increasing demand for space has made the South Side attractive. Major facilities like Pittburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine are within walking distance of SouthSide Works. The universities’ biotech and IT discoveries have spun off a number of start-up firms, creating demand for space at SouthSide Works ideal for firms like MAYA Viz Design and Akustica. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), the region’s largest employer, leases all 160,000 square feet in the Quantum I building.

The Live, Work and Play Environment
Access to recreational amenities has become increasingly valued in Pittsburgh, and consequently has been a major attraction of SouthSide Works. Adjacent development brings hundreds of additional office workers to the neighborhood daily. Flanking SouthSide Works is the UPMC Sports Performance Center. The 40-acre complex includes sports medicine and training facilities, including indoor and outdoor practice fields for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The new FBI headquarters and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training and conference center are a short walk from SouthSide Works and riverfront trails and parks.

REI’s retail location received LEED-CI honors for commercial interiors from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The riverfront trail that runs alongside SouthSide Works is part of the Great Allegheny Passage, a 316-mile off-road route to Washington, D.C. The South Shore Riverfront Park is a key destination within Three Rivers Park, a 10-mile network of public and private green space along the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. The green space proved a lure for REI of Seattle. The nationally-known outdoors outfitter chose the site over others in the city expressly because of the connection between easy outdoor access and a hip young community. American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), a national retailer targeting the 15-to-25-year-old market, also sought an appealing lifestyle for young workers. AEO chose SouthSide Works as its national headquarters after a seven-year search. The 800-store chain has also purchased Quantum II, an 187,000-square-foot office building, and will build Quantum III, a 150,000-square-foot office tower on the riverfront. It also leases a flagship store in SouthSide Works. Other major tenants at SouthSide Works include Sur la Table, the Cheesecake Factory, Joseph Beth Booksellers, Urban Outfitters and BCBG/Max Azria. The Hofbräuhaus, with a riverfront beer garden, will join 10 other restaurants in the district.

Incorporating Nature Through Thoughtful Design
Soffer continues to work closely with civic designers on ways to blend new SouthSide Works structures with the riverfront park. “Each riverfront project is distinct, but together, they combine seamlessly,” says Lisa Schroeder, executive director of the Riverfront Task Force. “We create standards for elements like view corridors and pedestrian connections. Quantum III is a terrific example of how developers create their own solutions. It features transparent glazing, landscaping along trails, high-quality paving and lighting plans. Soffer has cooperated with us at several critical moments in developing master plans.”

Two elements of the park design incorporate and interpret its industrial past. Between the existing SouthSide Works and the riverfront lies a long, narrow lawn designated as Tunnel Park. The landscaped area tops an active CSX rail line that runs under the site. Now, outdoor chessboards and events like outdoor yoga classes (sponsored by neighboring REI) attract neighbors. A hardscaped piazza connects the lawns to River Place, intersected by flights of steps down to River Landing. The steps end at the performance area, which is backed to a retaining wall. The Riverwall is a remnant of the original pier of the steel mill site; other sections are being preserved throughout the park. To remove it from the flood plain, the bike trail will pass through the site along Tunnel Park, rather than at the river’s edge, thus guaranteeing full public access to the shore.

Brownfield Redevelopment Blends History and Innovation
A century ago, the South Side was a bustling neighborhood where people worked, shopped, and lived. In 2007, it has been re-established as a lively mixed-use neighborhood, with attention refocused on a high-quality urban lifestyle. The Soffer Organization is proud to be a part of the transformation in its hometown. SouthSide Works is proof of what Bilbao, Sydney and other cities have discovered: brownfield redevelopment can accommodate historical character and dynamic innovation creating great urban places.

For more information
www.southsideworks.com