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Pittsburgh Public Market moving to a new Strip District location
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The Pittsburgh Public Market will be moving from the historic produce terminal to a new location in the Strip District.
City Urban Redevelopment Authority board members approved a grant not to exceed $40,000 today to help facilitate the move to an undisclosed site in the Strip.
Becky Rodgers, executive director of Neighbors in the Strip, which owns the market, said after the meeting that the location is being kept secret until lease negotiations have been completed.
The market has operated out of the produce terminal since its opening in 2010. Ms. Rodgers said the market wasn't being pushed out of the terminal, about a third of which will be demolished to make way for an office and residential development being proposed by the Buncher Co.
She said the terminal location offers limited infrastructure, while the new site will give the market room to expand and perhaps add a restaurant. "It just offers us so much more creativeness," she said.
The market recently got a $30,000 grant to fund a feasibility study for a needed commercial kitchen, the type of amenity it could not offer in the produce terminal. Construction related to the Buncher project also factored into the decision to move elsewhere, she said.
Ms. Rodgers said the market hopes to open in the new location on May 1. It now operates on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in the produce terminal but is looking into the possibility of expanding that to five days a week in the new location.
The move is estimated to cost about $400,000. Neighbors in the Strip is in the process of raising money to help pay for that.
The market is home to more than 40 merchants. Some 325,000 to 350,000 people have visited the market over the past two years, based on a counter in the building, Ms. Rodgers said.
"It's a good attraction for the Strip," she said.
The URA board also approved preliminary steps related to $80 million to $90 million in tax increment financing, the largest such package in the city's history, to help fund roads, utilities, parks and other improvements at the former LTV coke works site in Hazelwood. The brownfield site is targeted for a $900 million office, research and residential development.
First Published January 10, 2013 4:49 pm
