Gardens at Market Square Mixed-Use Project Breaks Ground in Downtown Pittsburgh

By Adriana Pop, Associate Editor

Millcraft Investments recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for The Gardens at Market Square, a $100 million office, hotel and retail complex slated to rise on Forbes Avenue, between Market Square and Wood Street.  

According to the Pittsburgh Business Times, the new development will feature a 197-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel, as well as a 129,000-square-foot office building, 14,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, and a 330-car parking garage. Miami-based Arquitectonica is the designer of the project, which will include an 18- and 11-story structures.

Turner Construction, the builder of The Gardens, will lease about 20,000 square feet of office space at the new complex. Meanwhile, popular restaurant Burgatory, one of the project’s anchor retail tenants, will be joined by Roost 50 New American Kitchen, which is set to replace Jackson’s Social Bar and Restaurant. Roost 50 will offer local, organic and GMO-free dining options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Announcements for a few more restaurants are expected in the next months.

The Gardens at Market Square has been designed to achieve LEED Silver certification and should be complete by 2015. A $4 million Economic Growth Initiative grant from the Corbett administration, along with tax-increment financing support from the city, school district and county are among the project’s financial sources.

“The Gardens, in fact, will be one of the first privately owned multi-tenant high-rise office buildings built in downtown in decades,” said Lucas Piatt, president of Millcraft Investments, during his presentation. “And it will fill one of the last areas of blight in the newly renovated Market Square and complement what is happening at the Point Park University Academic Village.”

Gov. Tom Corbett, Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, along with other officials including state Sen. Wayne Fontana, City Councilman Daniel Lavelle, state Rep. Jake Wheatley and acting URA Executive Director Robert Rubinstein took part in Millcraft’s groundbreaking ceremony.

Photo credits: www.millcraftinv.com