Hazelwood Green lands innovation hub
Calif.-based GSVlabs signs long-term lease
An old locomotive roundhouse in Hazelwood soon will become a hub of a different sort — for startups, corporations and others.
Global Silicon Valley Labs, better known as GSVlabs, announced Tuesday that it has signed a long-term lease to locate in the Hazelwood Green redevelopment on the Monongahela riverfront.
GSVlabs, based in San Mateo, Calif., will make Pittsburgh its next innovation hub — taking space in the historic roundhouse building being redeveloped into collaborative work and event space. The company plans to open the hub in the second quarter of 2021.
Landing the deal is a big win for Almono LLC, the partnership that owns the sprawling 178-acre former LTV Coke Works site.
“We are extremely excited to bring GSVlabs to Pittsburgh, as we continue to expand our footprint not just with our global online platform, but in supporting emerging innovation markets around the world with our Innovation Centers,” said Nikhil Sinha, CEO
of GSVlabs, in the official announcement.
“We see huge potential in Pittsburgh’s rapidly growing market of entrepreneurial and startup activity, with its expanding network of unprecedented university talent and engineering, AI, and data science expertise.”
The innovation hub will be GSVlabs’ third. It has centers in the Silicon Valley and Boston. It took a chance on Hazelwood Green because it saw Pittsburgh as a hot spot for startup and innovation space.
At the roundhouse, the tenant will take all 26,000 square feet available. It plans to offer entrepreneurial-focused coworking spaces for startups and founders, indoor-outdoor collaborative working and events space, and flexible workshop and training rooms.
The roundhouse is being redeveloped by Almono — the partnership made up of the Heinz Endowments, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation — that has been marketing the space as a technology acceleration and coworking space.
GSVlabs will join Carnegie Mellon University’s Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute and its Manufacturing Futures Initiative, Catalyst Connection and autonomous vehicle startup Aptiv at Hazelwood Green.
CMU and Catalyst have moved into the first building erected by the Regional Industrial Development Corp. as part of its Mill 19 redevelopment. Aptiv is set to move into a second building in that complex this spring.
Sam Reiman, director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation and Almono member, said landing GSVlabs took more than two years.
“With Carnegie Mellon University, Aptiv and now GSVlabs at Hazelwood Green, there is growing momentum for us to build Pittsburgh’s — and the country’s — new economy right in our own backyard — through the sustainable reuse of a historic site where the old economy was forged,” Mr. Reiman said.
Securing the tenant also is a momentum builder for Hazelwood Green, which has struggled to gain traction beyond the Mill 19 development.
GSVlabs bills itself as a worldwide innovation platform with over 20,000 members, 450 investors and more than 100 enterprise partners in its network. It states that its mission “is to create the world’s premier global innovation platform — empowering entrepreneurs and democratizing innovation around the world.”
“As the first national startup accelerator to set up a permanent location in Pittsburgh, GSVlabs is demonstrating confidence in the vision established for Hazelwood Green as a place where innovation is fostered, anchored by the p4 principles of people, planet, place, and performance,” Mayor Bill Peduto said in a statement.
The Hazelwood Green roundhouse dates to 1887. It was used in part to service train engines.
In its redevelopment, Almono plans to incorporate original elements from the 10-bay structure, including the turntable and operator cab, crane, fume hood room, and rail tracks.
Almono already has replaced parts of the roof, removed an enclosure that was collapsing, and hauled away abandoned vehicles.
The roundhouse was built by the Monongahela Connecting Railroad and later owned by Jones & Laughlin Steel and the LTV Steel Co.