Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Walnut Capital boosts residential holdings
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Shadyside real estate company Walnut Capital Partners has purchased an apartment complex that overlooks the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, as part of a 489-unit acquisition of several residential properties throughout the East End.

Walnut Capital now owns more than 1,500 units, many of them in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill.

Other than the 99-unit complex overlooking the tunnel, called Treetops Apartments, the other properties recently acquired by Walnut Capital include the 327-unit Ivanhoe Apartments in Monroeville and a 63-unit block of townhomes and apartments in South Oakland, along Dawson and South Bouquet streets.

Walnut Capital plans to renovate Treetops, adding a new lobby, a driveway, parking and landscaping. It also wants to renovate the five Oakland buildings, now occupied mostly by undergraduate students at the University of Pittsburgh. Walnut Capital President Todd Reidbord, who lived in one of the Oakland buildings while attending law school, hopes a renovation will attract more graduate students as the university shifts more of its undergraduate housing closer to the Peterson Events Center.

Walnut Capital, which also owns several high-profile buildings in the Walnut Street shopping district and the Strip District, has attracted attention for several controversial renovation projects in the city, including the redevelopment of Beacon Commons, Walnut on Wightman, and Walnut on Forbes. Reidbord said his company hoped to double its holdings in the next two years, thereby enlarging its portfolio to 3,000 units.

"We are very bullish on the apartment market in Pittsburgh," he said.

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