Video Rendering courtesy of MSR Design. Landscape Design: Ten x Ten.
Mill 19 is a 265,000 square-foot complex on the 178-acre Hazelwood Green site, once owned by J&L Steel Hazelwood Works and LTV Steel. The building was left to rust when the steel industry collapsed, but its bones – an underlying steel superstructure – remain strong. With revival and reuse plans well underway, Mill 19 is being transformed into an engine of revitalization for the entire community.
In 2018, we began construction of our second building at Mill 19, a new 70,000 square foot workspace that will house a corporate R&D center for a global technology company. The three-story building will include offices, ground floor prototyping, lab, and workshop space.
Mill 19’s first building, with some additional space in the second, will house Carnegie Mellon University’s Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute (ARM) and CMU’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative (MFI).
“Hazelwood Green is a living laboratory for the new economy, bridging the gap between research and practice in today’s fast-changing, technology-driven marketplace,” said Farnam Jahanian, president of Carnegie Mellon University.
With robotics and advanced manufacturing rapidly becoming economic pillars of the region, RIDC’s connectivity to so many of these companies and organizations has been crucially important. Those relationships have enabled us to develop a vision for the future for many of our sites, making them productive again, getting them back on the tax rolls and producing thousands of new jobs.
In contrast to the pollution produced by the original facility, as was once typical of the steel industry, Mill 19 has been designed to be eco-friendly, environmentally sustainable and LEED v4 Gold certified. A high-performance envelope provides maximum thermal efficiency and up to 96% daylight autonomy. Two-thirds of the complex’s total electricity usage will be offset by energy generated on site and storm water will be conveyed through a rainwater garden to centrally located infiltration basins. Captured rooftop rainwater will be reused in the cooling tower and for flushing in the restrooms.
The entire 168-acre Hazelwood Green property adjacent to Mill 19 – separately owned by Almono LP, a collaboration of three major Pittsburgh foundations – benefitted early on from RIDC’s management of multi-million-dollar site grading, environmental remediation and road access projects. Today, RIDC’s Mill 19 is creating a center of gravity for the entire site and, indeed, for the entire community, as investors and other businesses, spurred by recent news of new construction and exciting new tenants, are showing increased interest in surrounding property. There is already emerging a new energy and vitality that we haven’t seen in this area for many years.
