Commercial Property News
Old Nabisco Plant to Become 500,000SF Mixed-Use Center
Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor
June 22, 2006

The 495,000-square-foot building that was once the home of Nabisco's cracker manufacturing factory will soon make way for Bakery Square at Eastside, a sprawling 500,000-square-foot mixed-use lifestyle center in Pittsburgh's East End neighborhood to be developed by Walnut Capital.

Bakery Square at Eastside will bring a live-work-play element, providing a 120-room hotel, approximately 130,000 square-feet of retail offerings, a 38,810-square-foot fitness facility, more than 150,000 square-feet of office space and 38 residential units. With the project still in the formulating stages, a price tag for its development has not yet been attached to it.

Walnut Capital, which tapped real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis Inc. for a marketing partner, will build Bakery Square on a six-acre parcel along Penn Ave. The Pittsburgh-based developer will acquire the century-old bakery from Regional Industrial Development Corp. for an undisclosed amount, and prepare for an estimated fall 2007 groundbreaking. While the various elements of the project will come together to create a veritable 24-hour city-within-a city development, the retail segment will address a need that already exists--and is on the rise--within the community.

“With the growth of the hospital and the university in the surrounding area, coupled with the most desirous residential living in the city, the demand for retail space has become heightened,” CB Richard Ellis vice president Herky Pollock told CPN. “Additionally, national retailers and restaurants who typically require larger footprints than are available in street-front retail have expressed an overwhelming desire to be a part of this project.” Bakery Square is on schedule to reach completion in early 2009.

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