Hitchhiker Brewing to open Downtown — and brew a special coffee
Hitchhiker Brewing Co., which makes and serves beer in Sharpsburg and Mt. Lebanon, is buying a thin slice of Downtown where it will also serve coffee.
The specialty of this house — a 13-footwide storefront squeezed along Liberty Avenue between the Fairmont Pittsburgh hotel and Heinz Hall — will look like beer. Owner Gary Olden wants to specialize in foamy, cold-brewed coffee served with an infusion of nitrogen.
The place also will sell warm drip coffee and espresso drinks, especially when the weather is cold. Then, around noon, service will transition more to beer, although coffee will still be available.
“[We’re] just trying to do our own thing,” says Mr. Olden.
He is serious about the coffee angle. Last summer, Hitchhiker started selling its own Shakes Blend beer with coffee roasted by 19 Coffee. Nitro cold brew coffee has been on tap in Sharpsburg for four months and will become available in Mt. Lebanon by Feb. 1. Mr. Olden says the plan is for Hitchhiker to become a “toll roaster” — buying its own coffee beans and other raw materials and using 19 Coffee’s roaster to make Hitchhiker coffees. If customers like it, coffee service could be expanded at other Hitchhiker locations.
To make this skinny, 70-foot deep Downtown space work well, Mr. Olden and architects at Lab 8 Designs plan to remove the upper floors as was done in the former Fort Pitt Brewing Co. building in Sharpsburg. And he wants the facade to be redone in mostly glass. Plans call for a mezzanine in the rear for more seating.
The building, at 604 Liberty Ave., was empty when the Urban Redevelopment Authority purchased it in 1998. Since then, the onetime newsstand has been a pop-up art installation, but the URA couldn’t find the right developer. In the late 1890s, the building was the Wilson, Alex. & Со. cigar factory, but it has housed many other businesses, from candy and flowers to typewriters. A 1927 ad in The Pittsburgh Press for Johnson’s clothing company called it “Pittsburgh’s Busiest Corner.” The University of Pittsburgh Library System has a 1920s or ’30s photo of it when it was the Rudy restaurant.
In 2012, the Post-Gazette reported that the building was being eyed by a developer who wanted to buy it from the URA to turn it into a townhouse and a street-level cafe or bistro. Most recently, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership was going to buy it and, with help from the URA and philanthropic groups, turn it into a maker space.
Mr. Olden’s purchase and development of the space — he declined to say the price — was discussed at a public meeting at the PDP on Wednesday. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership has posted an overview of the project at downtownpittsburgh.com. According to the URA, the PDP’s purchase and rehabilitation was to cost $990,000.