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A view of the backside of Immune Transplant and Therapy Center in Bloomfield.
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Two projects aim to advance Pittsburgh's shift to innovation economy

Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette

Two projects aim to advance Pittsburgh's shift to innovation economy

Labs for three physician researchers will occupy the UPMC Immune Transplant and Therapy Center in Bloomfield when it opens in the fall of 2021, a cornerstone in the city’s plans for an innovation district and new economy.

Steel and heavy industry long dominated Pittsburgh’s economy, but all that has been changing.

The new center will house the labs of Mark Jay Shlomchik, chair of the department of immunology at the University of Pittsburgh; Robert Ferris, director of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center; and Fadi Lakkis, scientific director of Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, in 245,000 square feet of a sprawling historic building where Model T Fords were once assembled on Baum Boulevard.

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Another 108,000 square feet of lab space is being developed at the site without tenants yet signed.

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“This is going to become a world-class research hub,” Matthew Rendulic, assistant director of real estate development at Pitt, said during a tour of the building Thursday.

The total size of the building is 353,000 square feet, comparable to nearly four city blocks.

The human body’s response to disease invaders and advances in cancer research are areas that will be studied in search of new treatments for cancer and organ rejection, Dr. Ferris said. Ultimately, these studies are expected to result in new drugs and medical devices for commercialization.

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A 2017 Brookings Institution study recommended the development of an Oakland Innovation District where entrepreneurs and scientists could collaborate to create an economy powered by scientific breakthroughs and startup life science companies.

Since then, Baltimore, Md.-based Wexford Science + Technology LLC has been working with UPMC and Pitt to develop the Bloomfield site, as well as a similar lab and office tower at 3440 Forbes Ave., just over two miles away in Oakland.

About 500 researchers and support staff will work in the eight-story building in Bloomfield, which was built as a self-contained car manufacturing facility in 1915.

The Forbes Avenue office and lab tower hit a speed bump in October with rejection of the plans by the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment because the building’s height exceeded city limits by more than 100 feet. But the company has since revised its plans by shrinking the building size to 10 from 13 stories.

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Revised plans were recently presented to Oakland Planning and Development and other neighborhood advocacy groups, said Michael Dembert, director of development at Wexford.

“We think it’s a fair compromise,” he said. “There’s definitely a need for this kind of space in Oakland.”

Meanwhile, Brookings Institution, a nonprofit policy research organization based in Washington D.C., is advocating for federal support of innovation districts as a way to balance growing geographic inequities that are leaving rural areas and much of the nation’s heartland behind. Federal research dollars helped create the life science powerhouses of Boston, Silicon Valley and Research Triangle Park, and future government funding could be directed to other areas to hot-wire the economy, Brookings urban policy experts Jennifer S. Vey and Julie Wagner wrote in a recent article.

Brookings identified 35 metro areas nationwide that could spread tech innovation across the country, including Pittsburgh.

Innovation districts are “already positioning themselves to compete on a global scale by forging collaborations among university, industry and public sector entities as well as facilitating the sharing of technologies, streamlining commercialization processes and supporting entrepreneurship, education and skill building in their communities,” the authors wrote.

Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699

Updated at 4:39 p.m. Feb. 20

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First Published: February 20, 2020, 8:30 p.m.

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A view of the backside of Immune Transplant and Therapy Center in Bloomfield.  (Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette)
Workers use a motorized scaffold on what will be a multi-story atrium at the Immune Transplant and Therapy Center in Bloomfield.  (Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette)
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