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Apartments planned for Heinz plant Developer wants to put 250-300 units in 5 vacant buildings Thursday, May 31, 2001 By Dan Fitzpatrick and Patricia Sabatini, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Cleveland developer John Ferchill plans to buy five empty North Side buildings from H.J. Heinz Co., fill them with 250 to 300 upscale apartments and rent the units to young Pittsburgh professionals.
The total cost for the development is estimated at $65 million to $70 million.
Built between 1912 and 1931, the Heinz buildings cover four acres, have 650,000 square feet of space and are five to seven stories high.
Heinz wants to sell because it has no long-term plans for the buildings where it once made baby cereal, beans and prepared meats. After the sale, Heinz would continue to lease several floors in the building closest to the Allegheny River.
Most of the buildings have been empty for the past five to eight years. One was vacated last summer when Heinz moved production of single-serve condiments to Fremont, Ohio.
In size, Ferchill's riverfront development would be the largest apartment complex built near Downtown in recent years, eclipsing the 232-unit Lincoln at North Shore and The Penn Garrison, a 117-unit apartment project that opens today along Penn Avenue.
If completed, Ferchill's apartments would give tenants a sweeping view of the city, the Strip District and the Allegheny River, with the buildings sandwiched between the 16th Street Bridge and the bulk of Heinz's North Side plant.
"It is on the river, it is near Downtown, but it is not in the middle of Downtown. We consider it to be an ideal location," Ferchill said.
While his proposed apartments would be sandwiched on each side by buildings currently occupied by Heinz, the bulk of the global food giant's operations will remain to the east of the complex. Those operations include the company's current factory, where it makes baby food and canned soup; various offices; a research center; and a new warehouse and distribution facility scheduled for completion in August.
To the west of Ferchill's new apartments, Heinz will continue to lease two office buildings owned by The Buncher Co., a Squirrel Hill real estate firm. One, a Pittsburgh landmark, features a neon Heinz sign and a large red, ketchup bottle that "pours." The other is the headquarters building for the company's frozen foods unit.
Many details of the proposed North Side apartment complex have yet to be worked out. Ferchill wants parking, but he is not yet sure how many spaces the site would hold. He also does not know how much rents would be, nor is he sure what he would do with a rail line that runs through the property.
The goal is to start construction in spring 2002. Depending on the demand for new apartments, Ferchill may decide to build the complex in stages, phasing in the work over two to three years. He may decide to seek historic tax credits to fund some of the project, but he does not anticipate asking the city or county for funds.
Ferchill, 58, has done this type of project before. His Cleveland firm, The Ferchill Group, has completed similar historic rehabilitation proj-ects in Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland.
His first projects as a developer were low-income apartments subsidized by the federal government, and his first downtown Cleveland project was a building known as the Western Reserve, which he purchased, renovated and expanded.
In his career, Ferchill has completed 15 apartment projects. His architect, Jonathan Sandvick, is responsible for 43 historic rehabilitations in Cleveland alone, Ferchill said.
"We are not neophytes in this type of project," he said.
Ferchill discovered Pittsburgh two years ago, after clashes and disagreements with Cleveland Mayor Michael White forced him to seek opportunities in other cities. Ferchill's first Pittsburgh project was a 150,000-square-foot office building in Hazelwood, at the Pittsburgh Technology Center. Cellomics Inc., a Harmar biotechnology firm, recently agreed to lease the building from Ferchill, who is planning two more buildings in the same office park.
In a conservative city where out-of-town developers are rare, Ferchill sticks out. He looks and talks like a 1980s-style developer, with slicked-back hair, loud shirts and plenty of confidence.
"The ability to get people to believe in you and then like you is probably the No. 1 attribute a developer can have," he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in July. "Every one of us has massive egos. You know why? You can't survive any other way. You really have got to believe you can do anything."
His signature project in Cleveland was the $45 million North Point Tower, a 20-story office complex overlooking Lake Erie.
The building opened in 1989 amid a glut of office space in downtown Cleveland, and Ferchill and his partner had problems leasing all of the space. After restructuring the building's debt, a lender forced the partners to relinquish their stakes entirely.
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