New dorm promises fresh face in Uptown
A gateway to Pittsburgh’s Uptown should be a little greener — and stand a little taller — in a couple of years.
Duquesne University is moving forward with plans for a 12-story, roughly 550-bed dormitory for the 1000 block of Forbes Avenue, about a block south of PPG Paints Arena. The university’s first new dorm in a decade, the building will help frame a primary artery through the neighborhood, where Duquesne is developing its College of Osteopathic Medicine and opened the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse arena in 2021.
The city Planning Commission approved the student housing this month, keeping the project on pace for a hopeful opening in fall 2024. It will replace a surface parking lot between the Power Center — a campus recreational hub — and the construction site for the new college.
frame a primary artery through the neighborhood, where Duquesne is developing its College of Osteopathic Medicine and opened the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse arena in 2021.
The city Planning Commission approved the student housing this month, keeping the project on pace for a hopeful opening in fall 2024. It will replace a surface parking lot between the Power Center — a campus recreational hub — and the construction site for the new college.
“That part of Uptown is like the entrance from Downtown Pittsburgh. Having any nice and new development looks really good in that space,” said Brittany McDonald, executive director at Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh, a nonprofit concerned with neighborhood revitalization and quality-oflife issues.
She had heard no reservations about the plans, which she said will combine with the medical college to help energize the area. The school will be Duquesne’s first new college in more than two decades.
Its first class should coincide with the dorm’s intended opening, said university spokesman Gabriel Welsch. The new housing will increase the number of fully equipped apartments on campus and will be especially attractive to upper-class students and those enrolled in the medical school, he said.
“Timing is good due to favorable partnership with our private developers, progress on the medical school and trends that show increasing interest in Duquesne and demand for apartment living on campus,” Mr. Welsch said in an email.
The dorm should count 226 units and fits into a decade-long institutional plan approved by city officials in January, according to a presentation before the Planning Commission. The total number of beds on campus — now 3,545 — won’t increase “as the university has plans to retire an older asset,” Mr. Welsch noted. Overall enrollment was just more than 8,300 as of last fall, Duquesne data shows.
Appearing at the Planning Commission this month, vendors on the dorm project said green-roof assemblies will help manage stormwater at the site, while three planned open-space areas — “park zones” — will make more ground permeable for runoff. Understory and canopy trees will help green the block, landscape architect Dan McDowell told the commissioners.
“We want it to be just a really soft feel,” he said. Planners also are pursuing accreditation for the project under LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the U.S. Green Building Council’s system for gauging sustainability and efficiency.
Meanwhile, designers are developing the building itself to mesh well with nearby campus facilities, said Sam Rajamanickam, principal with Baltimorebased Design Collective Inc. A stepped-back approach will introduce variety and interest to the exterior, while game rooms and fitness spaces facing Forbes will create an active facade, he told the commission.
The project “represents a continuation and sort of extension of the Duquesne campus within that Forbes corridor, linking a large number of the current Duquesne facilities,” said Ryan Indovina, principal at Strip District- based Indovina Associates Architects. The university has not announced a formal name for the new building.
Several final reviews remain in the works, including those for landscaping and construction management plans, according to the city planning department. The green space and trees in particular will brighten the Forbes corridor, where a new mural just went up over the summer at the intersection with Boyd Street, Ms. McDonald said.
She supported the dorm in a letter to the city, she said, as it upholds the EcoInnovation District plan adopted by planning commissioners in 2017. The blueprint seeks to spark development and revitalization in Uptown and West Oakland.
“These are really good projects along the corridor that are enlivening it,” Ms. McDonald said.