PHOTOS COURTESY DESMONE ARCHITECTS

Now under construction, a new residential/retail development is set to connect Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill, Lawrenceville, Strip District and Bloomfield neighborhoods.

RDC Inc. broke ground in June on Brewers Blocks, located on Liberty Avenue between 32nd and 33rd streets near the former Iron City Brewery. The Green Tree-based real estate and construction company is collaborating on the project with New York-based Commonwealth Development Partners. Lawrenceville-based Desmone Architects is in charge of the design.

“It’s a great piece of property,” RDC president Shawn Fox tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “These neighborhoods represent Pittsburgh. It’s the perfect spot among all those areas. We hope to create a new city block there to bridge all of those neighborhoods.”

Once finished, Brewers Block will consist of 377 residential units spread across three buildings, 2,300 square feet of ground-floor retail space, more than 100 bicycle storage units and 40,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor amenity space, including a rooftop pool with views of the Pittsburgh skyline. 

There also will be an “Animated Alley,” a common area where concerts and community events can be held.

Desmone architect and project manager Jared Korchok says he wanted to implement characteristics from several of the distinct neighborhoods bordering Brewers Block into the design. This included inspiration from the brick warehouses of the Strip District (including the large windows), the pedestrian-focused experience of Lawrenceville and the varying heights of the single-family row houses located in Polish Hill. 

“These studies led to the incorporation of actual ‘walk-up’ townhome units along Sassafras Way and 33rd street, which allows users to engage the building more on a pedestrian scale similar to both Polish Hill and Lawrenceville,” Korchok says. “We also were very interested in playing with different vantage points from the site, based on users being able to access multiple levels of exterior patio and roof deck amenity areas.”

While an existing three-story building, built between 1910 and 1932, will be repurposed into 31 luxury “loft-style” units, according to Korchok, two other buildings will be demolished and replaced by new six-story buildings.

Once a storage warehouse for the Peerless Biscuit Company, the existing building will include a rooftop pool deck and party room once renovations are complete. There also will be a large first-floor amenity area with a fitness center, bar, coffee shop, demo kitchen, lounge and gaming areas.

“We intend to keep the main structure of this building intact, and are removing all of the previous infill from the larger windows that were once present, and replacing all of those openings with new warehouse-style windows to reflect the previous look of the building,” Kochok says.