October Development’s $20M Hotel and Apartment Project in Pittsburgh Receives $3M Economic Growth Initiative Grant

By Adriana Pop, Associate Editor

A $20 million redevelopment project centered around the renovation of the former ARC House building on Pittsburgh’s North Side will result in a new 120-key Comfort Inn by Choice hotel, a 300-space parking garage and a 36-unit apartment building.

According to the Pittsburgh Business Times, Gov. Tom Corbett has announced a $3 million Economic Growth Initiative grant that would support the new development, which is slated to rise along a two-acre stretch of East Ohio Street in Historic Deutschtown. The area, which includes 20 parcels, is an active junction for nearby Interstate 279 and Route 28 and serves as a gateway location for all of the city’s North Side neighborhoods.

A team led by locally based October Development and assisted by the North Side Leadership Conference has yet to determine the project’s construction start.

The redevelopment of the historic 20,000-square-foot bank building has in fact been in the planning stages for about five years.

“It’s an incredibly important site for the Deutschtown neighborhood and for the North Side as a whole. It’s about remaking that entry point. Right now, what you see is a beautiful but vacant bank building and a bunch of empty lots and vacant and decaying structures. It’s not what the North Side is,” Mark Fatla, executive director of the North Side Development Conference (NSLC), told the newspaper.

Design and financing for the project are yet to be finalized, as are the agreements with other development partners. North Side Community Development Fund, a subsidiary of the NSLC, is one of the funding providers for the new development.

“This investment will continue our mission of making the city of Pittsburgh a premier, worldwide destination,” Corbett said in a press statement. “Bringing people and jobs to the Northside area will ensure that we can continue to build a stronger city and state.”

Other grants recently awarded by Gov. Corbett include $30.7 million for United States Steel Corp.’s $187 million investment in its Mon Valley Works operations in Braddock, as well as $4 million for the revitalization of the former Saks department store building on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh.

Photo credits: LoopNet