URA to vote on $1.6 million purchase of former Hill District grocery property

The Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority is moving to acquire a former grocery store complex on Centre Avenue in the Hill District.

URA directors are scheduled to vote Thursday on purchasing the 2.6-acre property from Dollar Bank for $1.6 million. The complex previously housed a Shop ’n Save.

The Hill House Association and Economic Development Corp. built the $11.5 million grocery and adjoining retail space in the Centre Heldman Plaza with nearly $4 million in public subsidies, despite criticism that the neighborhood could not sustain a supermarket.

The store, which opened in 2013, closed in March because of declining sales, a city official said at the time.

Pittsburgh City Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle of the Hill District, who serves on the URA board and supports the purchase, said the URA and city hope to secure smaller supermarket as an anchor tenant for the property.

“The main goal is to get it back under public control so that we can then work with the community to see how it will be built back out,” Lavelle said Wednesday. “We do know a grocery store the size of the former Shop ’n Save won’t work, so it would be a smaller footprint, assuming we can get another grocer back in there, and then we would have additional space to put up a wall and do something else with it.”

The property includes four vacant storefronts. The Shop ’n Save occupied nearly 30,000 square feet.

Lavelle said he wouldn’t rule out a non-supermarket tenant.

“We’ll work with the community to see who we can attract to the space, but then also make sure that whatever we do with it is in alignment with the [Hill District] master plan as well as the Centre Avenue redevelopment plan that was done by the Hill [Community Development Corp.] a couple years ago,” he said.

The URA would purchase Dollar Bank loans and plans to negotiate with the city, Allegheny County and the Pittsburgh Public School District to settle liens they’ve filed against the property for delinquent taxes.

Lavelle said the Penguins’ redevelopment of the 28-acre former Civic Arena site and new housing in other parts of the Hill would significantly improve chances of a small store being profitable.