Meet the Strip District Produce Terminal’s new tenants in Pittsburgh
The Strip District Terminal’s storied past is about to reach future generations with a new chapter. Earlier this month, the building’s developer, Chicago-based McCaffery Interests, announced agreements with three more retailers as the $50 million redevelopment nears its end.
In keeping with McCaffery’s commitment to lease 25% of the Terminal to local or regional businesses, the space will welcome locally owned City Grows, a plant and gardening store, and OnPar now, a golf instruction and practice facility. Chicago-based District Brew Yards, a brewery collective and pour-your-own beer hall, also was announced. A Fine Wine & Good Spirits Premium Collection store was the Terminal’s first lessee, announced in January.
The building’s long, low shape is striking compared with modern-day design. In its heyday, it was perfectly utilitarian.
Built in 1926, the five-block-long building was meant to maximize access to the train tracks that ran where Smallman Street does today. Before chain grocery stores and shipping by truck, the Terminal was the region’s railroad-stocked, wholesale produce hub.
Jimmy Sunseri’s family has been selling food in the Strip District since well before the Terminal was built. The part-owner of Jimmy & Nino Sunseri Co. — a food retailer and restaurant on Penn Avenue — views the redevelopment as beneficial to other Strip District businesses.
“There aren’t any businesses going in down there that are going to interfere with the businesses that have been on Penn Avenue for two, three, four generations,” he said. “It will cause an influx of people to the Strip, and, whether you realize it or not, the Strip has to be a destination of choice. It’s not like in the old days when people just go for a ride.”
The Terminal’s renaissance will commence late this fall as these retailers begin to open their doors.
City Grows already is known to Pittsburgh green-thumbs through its trendy storefront in Upper Lawrenceville. What they may not know is that the owner, Patty Logan, probably has more in common with the Terminal’s original inhabitants than its modern ones.
“I don’t think I’ve ever lived where there’s a sidewalk in my entire life,” said Logan, a resident of Washington Township in Westmoreland County.
Taught to garden by her mother, Logan studied horticulture for one year at Penn State before beginning a career in real estate. Many years later, she combined her plant prowess and business savvy to open City Grows in one of Pittsburgh’s most sought-after neighborhoods at a time when live plants are a recurring theme in farmhouse and boho decor.
At nearly triple the floor space of its Lawrenceville location, City Grows’ Strip District sibling will host gardening and terrarium classes (post-pandemic) and sell composting supplies in addition to its crowd-pleasing selection of plants and pots. It’ll offer all of the local, artisan-made products customers are used to seeing in Lawrenceville, such as candles, teas, soaps and macramé plant hangers.
City Grows aims to open its Terminal location by February 2021.
District Brew Yards may have Chicago roots, but its model allows for a Steel City takeover.
Inspired by food hall-style eateries, owner Steve Soble created a highly-successful, first-of-its-kind “brewery collective.” To patrons, the 11,700-square-foot space will look like a pour-your-own beer hall with four distinct walls of taps. Three of those walls will offer beers from three local brewers — one brewery per wall — each with their logos prominently displayed. The fourth is a “try-out wall” for smaller operations, even home brewers, to reach a larger audience.
On the business end, DBY partners with a few local breweries and brews their recipes exactly as prescribed. Soble, who has been in the restaurant and bar business for 30 years, hopes for this model to launch those brewers into more robust businesses, naturally creating a rotating selection at DBY as brewers graduate to independent operations.
“A lot of people compare it to contract brewing,” Soble said. “We work with brewers to make it exactly how they want. They’re part of the process. At each point, they’re checking in to make sure that the beer is being made the way they think it should be made.”
Soble’s Chicago business partners became aware of the Terminal through Dan McCaffery and the “small world” of Chicago real estate.
Soble’s grandparents were Pittsburgh natives. Trips to the city were common for him as a kid; so, his familiarity with the area wasn’t a variable. It was the building’s history that sealed the deal for Soble.
“If you have an older structure and an older building, I’m already in,” said Soble, who lives in a refurbished schoolhouse in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.
DBY-style collaborations have been discussed with “one or two” Pittsburgh breweries so far, but Soble doesn’t plan on finalizing any partnerships until closer to DBY’s summer 2021 opening date.
OnPar now, a new concept seeking its first storefront, will offer golf instruction and practice space aimed at female golfers, though all are welcome. According to McCaffery’s release, OnPar will feature four Trackman golf simulators and a virtual putting green with underlying PuttView technology. It will have an exercise facility and juice bar. An opening date was not specified.
Fine Wine & Good Spirits, operated by the state Liquor Control Board, is expected to be the first Terminal retailer to open its doors with an estimated late-fall 2020 opening date.
Given the Strip District’s residential real estate boom, retailers providing convenience and entertainment to the area are in high-demand. About 135,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and office space remains at the Terminal.
“The Terminal is one of the most exciting projects we have ever worked on,” said McCaffery, CEO of McCaffery Interests, in a statement. “Despite the negative influence of the covid pandemic, tenant and general public interest in the project has been extremely high. We continue negotiating with a significant number of tenants and the number is increasing every day. Stand by for more announcements soon.”
Abby Mackey is a Tribune-Review contributing writer. You can contact Abby at abbyrose.mackey@gmail.com or via Twitter.
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