Projects as diverse as warehouse development and cutting-edge nanotechnology will get a boost from $24 million in state aid delivered by Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday.

	Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Gov. Ed Rendell announced a series of economic development investments in the region yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University. Click photo for larger image.

The redevelopment assistance capital grants will be used to develop another shovel-ready warehouse and air cargo site near Pittsburgh International Airport, expand the Pittsburgh Technology Center on Second Avenue, help to build a center for nanotechnology at Carnegie Mellon University and aid in the construction of a riverfront park.

Also benefiting will be the Children's Institute, which is renovating its Squirrel Hill facility, and The Children's Home of Pittsburgh, which is building a $20 million facility in Friendship.

The largest grant, $7 million, will go to the Allegheny County Airport Authority to help with the first phase of its North Field development project off Route 60 near Pittsburgh International. The initial 80-acre phase will feature two warehouses and two air cargo facilities involving about 600,000 square feet in all.

The project will add to the portfolio of sites the airport authority and private investors are developing near the airport. With the state grant in hand, Randy Forister, authority economic development director, said officials should be ready to start moving dirt at the North Field site by spring.

He said one national developer has expressed interest in the site, which sits near a new cargo interchange.

"The governor and Dan [Onorato, county chief executive] have expressed a lot of faith in us and we're going to continue to deliver sites to them," he said.

For a project closer to Downtown, the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority will get $4 million for a major expansion of the Pittsburgh Technology Center. The project eventually would add as many as 11 buildings and up to 1 million square feet of space, plus parking garages.

The URA currently is in talks with the Ferchill Group, a Cleveland-based company, about developing a 160,000-square-foot laboratory-ready building at the site.

As part of the expansion, the city is providing $25 million in tax increment financing to build parking garages at the center.

URA officials estimate the project could create as many as 2,500 jobs.

Carnegie Mellon will receive $4 million in state redevelopment assistance to help with construction of a $66 million facility to supplement the Collaborative Innovation Center that opened in 2005 and houses Google, Apple Computers, Intel and Microsoft offices.

The new building would feature the Commercialization Center for Nano-Enabled Technologies, focused on research and development in the burgeoning field of nanotechnology.

Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon, said officials hope to have the 180,000-square-foot building under construction sometime next year.

He said it would help put the region "in a very strong position with respect to nanotechnology" and other advanced fields.

"This will have a tremendous impact and we've had a record, for example in cyber security, which is in [the Collaborative Innovation Center], where we've been able to attract all of these tenants, and we will do the same in the nanotechnology area, too," he said.

Nanotechnology involves the creation and manipulation of materials so small that 100,000 of them would be no bigger than the width of a hair. Nanotechnology developed the cotton-like fibers that make up the stain-free slacks that many retailers are marketing and the altered, eternally durable metal used in tennis ace Andy Roddick's racket.

The state has been positioning itself to become a hub for nanotechnology, spending some $54 million since 1999 to try to capitalize on its assets. Officials believe the Carnegie Mellon center could create 350 to 400 direct technology jobs.

Other grants announced yesterday were:

$4.5 million to The Children's Home of Pittsburgh to help build a new $20 million, three-story facility in Friendship that is scheduled to open in the spring. It will allow The Children's Home to consolidate its two facilities in Shadyside and Bloomfield and double its space.

$2.5 million to help with development of the $30 million South Shore riverfront park near the SouthSide Works complex on the South Side. The park will provide river access and a link to the city's trail system.

$2 million toward renovations to the Children's Institute in Squirrel Hill, resulting in an expansion of hospital beds from 39 to 84, the addition of seven classrooms and more services for children with autism.

To secure the state grants, recipients must come up with matching funds.