Apartments added to office, retail plans for Smithfield Street building
A Cleveland developer is reshaping its plans for a seven-story building on Smithfield Street, adding two floors of residential to supplement office and retail in a bid to make it more of a catalyst for redevelopment in the corridor.
Stark Enterprises intends to construct about 40 apartments on the top two floors of the former Frank & Seder department store as part of a project it has dubbed the Icon on Smithfield.
It also has landed Davio’s, a Boston-based northern Italian steakhouse, to anchor a 9,730square-foot space on Fifth Avenue. If that restaurant comes, it will be the latest in a long string of steakhouses landing Downtown.
But Stark is also negotiating with other restaurants, including Honeygrow and an entertainment and dining venue called Punch Bowl Social that serves up karaoke, bowling, shuffleboard, pingpong, virtual reality and other gaming options in addition to food and drink.
The developer purchased the building at 441 Smithfield from Oxford Development Co. for $10.4 million in January 2017 with plans to create 160,000 square feet of office space on the five upper floors and 60,000 square feet of retail on the first two.
Stark now is looking at revising
the project, replacing offices with boutique apartments — studios and one and two bedrooms — on the top two floors, said Ezra Stark, chief operating officer.
The company decided to change course to try to generate more activity in the corridor and to make it more of a 24/7 environment, he explained. “We’re trying to make it a catalyst for the rest of Smithfield,” he said.
While Downtown has seen the explosion of new apartment construction over the last decade — including 311 being built across the street at the former Macy’s/Kaufmann’s department store — Mr. Stark believes it is still lagging behind other urban centers like Cleveland.
Stark is talking to public officials about Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance, or LERTA, help for the project. It hopes to get started with the renovations in the fourth quarter, if all goes well with those discussions, Mr. Stark said.
The developer has lined up Davio’s to take a prime spot on the first floor. According to a lease plan obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Honeygrow would take a 2,260-squarefoot space next to Davio’s and Punch Bowl Social would fill a 5,150-square-foot space at Fifth and Smithfield, with additional space on the second floor.
Mr. Stark said Honeygrow, a fast casual stir-fry restaurant with a location in East Liberty, has not signed a lease. The developer is “actively working with” Punch Bowl Social, he said.
Overall, Stark is looking for food and entertainment options to fill the two levels of retail — “things that will generate both daytime and nighttime traffic and really activate the area,” Mr. Stark said.
The building has been mentioned as a possible site for a smaller format Target store, perhaps 20,000 to 25,000 square feet in size. Mr. Stark declined to comment when asked about the retailer.
“There’s a lot of interest on the retail side,” he said, adding that Stark has pretty much filled the available space or is in “the late stages” of letters of intent or lease negotiations. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership reported earlier this month that Stark had lined up occupants for the space.
One tenant that has committed to the site is Davio’s, which is opening its first location in Pittsburgh and third in Pennsylvania.
Downtown already has a number of steakhouses and Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse announced just last week that it would open in the Union Trust Building on Grant Street, about two blocks from the Davio’s location.
Steve DiFillippo, Davio’s owner and founder, is not at all intimidated by all of the steakhouse competition, with nearly a dozen such restaurants in or near the Golden Triangle.
“They’re all great restaurants. That also got me excited. I don’t want to go to a city that has no steakhouses,” he said, explaining that he wants customers who are used to ordering “really good meat.”
What will separate Davio’s from the pack, he believes, will be the quality of its steaks and its menu, which also includes a variety of Italian and seafood dishes.
Mr. DiFillippo, who wrote a book titled “It’s All About the Guest,” said the restaurant also prides itself on superior customer service. “We’re just a great restaurant that we hope guests in Pittsburgh will like,” he said.
He hopes to open the restaurant, which will feature a large bar and an open kitchen, in late fall 2019. He saw Pittsburgh as a natural place to expand after opening Davio’s locations in Philadelphia and King of Prussia.
Herky Pollock, a CBRE executive vice president who is one of the region’s top retail brokers, said the redevelopment, along with that at the old Macy’s/Kaufmann’s store across the street, should round out the revitalization of the Fifth and Forbes corridor.
“Like any jigsaw puzzle, the centerpieces are tantamount to any beautiful picture. The development of this corner, which includes the Macy’s redevelopment, is the last piece remaining in the overall development of the Fifth and Forbes redevelopment,” he said.
Mr. Pollock, the broker who helped negotiate deals with the Del Frisco and Capital Grille steakhouses Downtown, also didn’t see the proliferation of such restaurants as a problem.
He said every steakhouse in Pittsburgh outperforms the national average for others in their respective chains.
“To lump all steakhouses into one category is analogous to lumping all car manufacturers into one category. There is a variety of steakhouses which appeal to different consumers,” he said.