Bill Wade, Post-Gazette River Walk Corporate Center on East Carson Street on the South Side has office space that offers an alternative to Downtown. The city skyline can be seen through an upper floor window.

By Elwin Green, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

At one end of the South Side, a century-old, million-square-foot complex that once functioned as a shipping terminal has been reborn into one of the region's newest and largest commercial office projects.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Howard Engelberg stands outside the Rivertech Office Works project on the South Side. Engelberg is one of three principals in the development, along with Barry Lhormer and Bob Crawford. Click photo for larger image.

At the other end, on the fringe of where a sprawling steelmaking complex once sat, an office park that consists entirely of suites of 1,400 square feet or smaller is going up, a bike path between it and the Monongahela River.

In between along the bustling historic strip along East Carson Street, upper floors are being converted into office space while closer to the waterfront, the massive SouthSide Works continues to add new offices.

For years, the South Side has become an increasingly hip and fun place to live, eat and play, with new restaurants, new housing and new entertainment clubs scattered throughout. But a similar reformation is occurring commercially, with new and renovated offices popping up all along the streets and trails that carve through the flats to the riverfront. By the end of next year, about 1.6 million square feet of office space will have been built or renovated on the South Side in a five-year period -- a virtual explosion of commercial space in one of the city's strongest residential communities.

Leading this charge is the big dog of this movement, the River Walk Corporate Center at 333 East Carson St.

Known for more than a century as the Terminal Buildings, the giant twin warehouses were designed by Charles Bickle, who also designed the original Kaufmann's building on Smithfield Street, Downtown.

Built between 1904 and 1906 at a cost of $1.5 million -- more than $30 million in today's dollars -- they served as one of Pittsburgh's primary facilities for receiving both rail and river shipments.

Now the former focal point for transferring material goods is occupied largely by companies that specialize in transferring ideas and information: its 70 tenants include think tanks, architecture and design firms, and photography studios.

River Walk is owned by Pittsburgh Terminal Properties, a corporation closely held by eight families led by Dan Lackner, president, and Jim Bibro, treasurer.

The company, which has owned the property since 1962, has spent some $20 million on renovations since 2001. Exterior renovations that included new lighting and windows were completed this year; inside, the electrical, heating and ventilation systems have been redone, but individual space is redone according to tenants' needs.

The buildings, renamed in June to capitalize on the growing interest in riverfront locations, offers spaces as small as 1,200 square feet, which it's hoped will lure start-ups.

"We're getting a handful of folks that have started in their basement or their living room, and their wife or husband is kicking them out of the house; and we're giving them a chance to get their first office space," said Mark Bibro, Jim's son and a vice president and general manager.

River Walk has benefited from word of mouth.

Take Barry G. Maciak, a board member at The Dollar Energy Fund, one of the tenants. He was so impressed with the space that he moved his project development and management consulting firm, World-Class Industrial Network LLC, there.

Maciak also is board president for New Century Careers, a training center for machinists that also relocated from Downtown to River Walk, where rents average from $5 to $6 a square foot for unfinished space to $14 a square foot for build-to-suit space.

As more tenants move in, they are creating a sort of "community," Bibro said, good-naturedly noting that "everyone's very interested in the renovations and has comments about what I'm doing wrong."

Some River Walk tenants have even begun doing business among themselves -- for instance, public relations firm Carney Fireman, which just moved in last month, has contracted printing jobs to Trust Franklin, a printing firm that has been in the building for 50 years.

Further east on East Carson, the organization that made its reputation by helping to preserve the antique buildings that line the commercial corridor also is getting into the new office space scene.

The South Side Local Development Corp. is redeveloping the former Foto Hut building at 1505-07 Carson Street and plans to move there when the building is complete.

The $3 million renovation will create nine apartments on the building's upper floors, retail space at street level and a lower-level courtyard with office space. Like other renovated properties, the building is being renamed the Beneficial Building -- a name that both refers to its long history as the home of the German Beneficial Union and reflects the nonprofit's hope that it prove an asset to the community.

The development group helps businesses to relocate to the South Side by providing technical assistance and contacts with agencies that help new companies with business planning, including the Cool Space Locator, the Lawrenceville-based real estate brokerage that specializes in helping businesses find urban locations from which to operate.

Some have ended up several blocks away, at two red brick buildings on Sidney Street that longtime South Siders may recall once housed the Gimbels warehouse.

In 1999, partners Ron Tarquinio and Joe Fryz paid $5 million for the then 52-year-old buildings, renovating the structures just in time to catch the wave of companies moving to the South Side. Now, "Everything in the building is new," said Tarquinio.

Renamed River Park Commons, the 221,000-square-foot complex is home to some 30 tenants, described by Tarquinio as "a bunch of techie companies, and just people who are looking for a nice clean space that's well taken care of and a good rate," including accounting firms, investment advisers and three or four Internet providers.

Rents range from $14 to $16 a square foot plus utilities, and spaces range from a minimalist 250-square-foot space to a sprawling 45,000 square feet.

Tenants desiring newer space don't have far to look -- almost next door is the massive SouthSide Works, where construction continues as tenants and stores move into what's already up.

The Soffer Organization's premier development includes two buildings dedicated entirely to office space, Quantum I and Quantum II, and three that will offer space above first-floor retail shops. All told, SouthSide Works will offer more than a half-million square feet to prospective tenants once it is completely developed in coming years.

Quantum I, which opened in 2001, is fully occupied by UPMC Health Systems, while Quantum II is still under construction. Tenants above the retail shops already include design firm William Thomas Design, JP Chase Home Financing and software developers Seec and the former Maya Viz, now a division of General Dynamic.

As it sprawls eastward past the SouthSide Works and beyond the Hot Metal Bridge, the former site of the LTV Steel mill is home to not only the UPMC sports medicine complex and the Steelers and Panthers practice and training center but also a new office complex targeting smaller firms.

River Center, the first building in the seven-building Rivertech Office Works project, is being developed by PRC Commercial and partners the R.E. Crawford Co. and Lhormer Real Estate Agency. PRC's previous address was the USX Tower.

Communications planning and design firm Agnew Moyer Smith Inc. moved into the building three years ago after 12 years on the North Side in the Clark Building.

"We wanted to be on the river. We love the waterfront," said principal Reed Agnew.

It also helped that the building was new and wired for the tech world, allowing the firm to "develop a collaborative work space that embraced technology more fully. Although our old space had technology, it hadn't been designed for that from the ground up."

Embracing technology more fully meant, among other things, switching everyone from desktop computers to laptops and having more than half of the company's 16,000 square feet -- they occupy the entire third floor -- consist of space that everyone could use and share when working on projects together.

Because a lot of the firm's work is visual, it also developed what it calls a "powerball" -- spheres that descend from the ceiling, suspended by corrugated hoses that contain wiring for power, Internet access, sound and video. Whenever someone wants to share information from their laptop, they can connect to a powerball and project images onto a wall.

Outside, workers enjoy the Heritage Trail, a walking/biking trail that passes within yards of the building as it winds from Station Square to the Glenwood Bridge. Even when employees are not using the trail, it adds to the location's ambience.

"I tell you what: You don't feel like you're in Pittsburgh," Agnew said. "When you see somebody rollerblading past ... it feels more like a California beach side."