With research spending at Pittsburgh universities approaching $1 billion a year, the demand for space is growing.

The problem is where to get it. There's little room in Oakland. The former LTV Coke Works in Hazelwood sits undeveloped, and the industrial parks blossoming near Pittsburgh International Airport are too far away.

That's where the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority comes in.

The agency hopes to capitalize on the demand by undertaking a major expansion of the Pittsburgh Technology Center, one that could add as much as 946,000 square feet of space and 11 buildings.

"The market needs to respond. We're allowing for more development so the growth can occur there," URA Executive Director Jerome Dettore said.

Dettore described the expansion as a "significant new step in the evolution of the Pittsburgh Technology project," which was launched by the city some two decades ago. The development transformed an old steel mill on Second Avenue in South Oakland into a high-technology office park.

Besides adding buildings to the seven existing ones on the site, the URA's new plan would add four garages. An estimated $25 million in tax increment financing would be used to develop the garages, which would contain 2,510 spaces, as well as other infrastructure at the site.

URA officials hope private sector interests will step in to erect as many as 11 buildings, and they have reason to believe that will happen.

The most obvious is an option agreement the URA board approved with Madison Acquisition Co. this month which calls for a 160,000-square-foot laboratory and office building on a 5.9 acre parcel at the site. The Downtown firm, which is paying $300,000 an acre, is in discussions with several possible tenants.

Beyond that, officials with the Greater Oakland Keystone Innovation Zone estimate at least 1 million square feet might be needed during the next 10 years to accommodate escalating research and development spending. Other estimates go as high as 1.5 million to 2 million square feet.

As of two years ago, $800 million a year was being spent on research at local universities, said Harold Miller, president of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. He predicted that would climb by $300 million to $500 million a year over the next 10 years.

"There's a pretty significant need for space in the future in and around Oakland to accommodate" a likely growth in research funding, he said.

Expansion of the Pittsburgh Technology Center, Miller said, is the "most achievable first step" to help satisfy the demand for such space.

Dettore agreed.

"I think that will be the market down there, for sure," he said.

"The quickest, lowest-cost path to having that kind of technology-oriented development is to expand the Pittsburgh Technology Center," said Don Smith, board chairman of the Greater Oakland Keystone Innovation Zone and director of economic development at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.

The latest phase will have some new wrinkles to make the center, on the Monongahela River, more attractive to potential researchers and other office users.

URA officials hope to give the site more of an urban feel, with retail outlets such as dry cleaners and restaurants to serve those working there.

There's also a natural link with the SouthSide Works commercial, residential and office complex across the river. The URA is working on a project to renovate the Hot Metal Bridge as a pedestrian and bicycle crossing.

The URA is starting the process of setting up the project's tax increment financing, which would have to be approved by City Council, the Pittsburgh school board and Allegheny County.

City Councilman Doug Shields, council's finance chairman, said he did not know whether he would support the tax breaks. He questioned the merits of building more garages in a time of rising gasoline prices and mass transit cuts.

He said the city might want to look at models created in other cities using commuter garages and mass transit to bring workers into urban office buildings and parks.

"Are we building dinosaurs here? Why are we accepting the model that everyone is going to arrive here in a car?" he asked.

But Dettore said it was unrealistic to make such a fundamental change in people's habits with one project.

"We're an automobile-driven society. Every developer, every office user we talk to, parking always is a very important ingredient. I can't imagine, within the next year, that anybody is going to change their lifestyle," he said.

The URA estimates that, once the expansion has been finished, with 11 new office buildings, the total tax revenue will be $3.4 million, more than double the $1.6 million in taxes now being paid at the Pittsburgh Technology Center.

With the financing, 60 percent of the new taxes will go to pay off the bonds used to build the garages and infrastructure.