Pa. AG’s new office costs taxpayers extra $300K

Security issues cited for move to the Strip

The move of the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office in Pittsburgh from Downtown to the Strip District will be a costly one for the state’s taxpayers.

They will be paying several hundred thousand dollars more a year to house workers in the attorney general’s new riverfront digs at One Waterfront Place in the Strip than they are in the AG’s current offices in the Manor Building, Downtown.

At One Waterfront Place, the former Seagate Technology building, the state will pay about $26.60 a square foot, or $76,504 a month, for 34,513square feet of space.

That compares to the $18 a square foot, or about $49,053 a month, on its current lease in the Manor Building at 564 Forbes Ave. for 32,700 square feet of space, according to the state Department of General Services.

That works out to a difference of $329,412a year.

Even adding in the extra 1,813 square feet that the attorney general will be using in the new building, the monthly rent at the Manor Building would be about $51,769 a month. That still would be $296,814 less a year than the AG is paying in the new building.

In an effort to retain the office in the Manor Building, “I don’t believe we presented them with much of a rate increase, if any at all,” said Jeremy Kronman, the CBRE executive vice president who is leasing the property. “We always try our very best to retain our tenants.”

He added that there was space available to accommodate any expansion needs.

The AG’s office now occupies about two floors in the building. About 85 employees — including prosecutors, agents, and support staff — work there. The office has been operating on a month-tomonth lease since the last one expired on Sept. 30, 2016.

Workers will be moving into One Waterfront Place, located on the Allegheny riverfront near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, by early next year. The new lease will run 10 years, with two five-year renewal options.

In a statement, Joe Grace, spokesman for Attorney General Josh Shapiro, said there were good reasons to make the move despite the extra cost. Security was a key one, he said.

“Security challenges and the importance of maintaining secrecy in the grand jury process led to multiple previous Office of Attorney General administrations to search for a new facility in Western Pennsylvania,” he said.

“The Department of General Services negotiated this lease to meet these security and law enforcement requirements while maintaining a presence in downtown Pittsburgh.”

One problem with the current setup is that the grand jury shared the same floor with criminal defense attorneys, an imperfect arrangement from the attorney general’s standpoint.

Mr. Grace said the new rent it is being charged “is competitive and comparable to Downtown Pittsburgh office rates.”

As part of the new lease, the office will get additional parking spaces in the Strip, and they will cost less than spaces it currently is paying for Downtown, Mr. Grace added.

Former Attorney General Bruce Beemer, now state inspector general, said there were “significant cost savings” involving parking and other “collateral issues” that helped to make the move a better deal for taxpayers than the lease cost would suggest. He said there were parking and security issues at the Manor Building that became “problematic” over time.