Look for Oxford Development Co. to market its new apartments at the Yards at 3 Crossings in the Strip District to 400 new employees expected to begin working at Uber Technologies Inc.’s new advanced technology center.
“It’ll help tremendously,” said Michael Daniels, executive vice president for Oxford, of Uber’s plans as his company prepares to begin marketing the Yards.
While the company will market the new 300-unit complex to appeal to a broad range of residents and employees of a variety of different companies, Oxford is uniquely poised to gain from Uber’s plans.
The Yards project is slated to open at 27th and Smallman streets in two phases next April and May as Uber works to open its new facility next April five blocks away on 32nd Street with a large number of employees expected to be new to Pittsburgh.
Daniels noted the Yards is being developed to offer the variety of amenites expected to appeal to employees of Uber and other companies setting up in the Strip.
The two projects are among more than 10 developments valued at more than $200 million in the Strip right now. The city neighborhood just east of downtown was the subject of panel discussion for Corridors of Opportunity, a quarterly event of the Pittsburgh Business Times. Daniels, whose company’s larger 3 Crossings project encompasses 16 acres and is expected to total $160 million in investment, was joined in the discussion by Dan McCaffery, CEO of Chicago-based McCaffery Interests, developer of the Cork Factory Lofts and expected to take on the Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales terminal, and Christopher Dirr, vice president of development for suburban-Cleveland NRP Group.
McCaffery was quick to recall how the Strip District was when his company first took on the nearly 300-unit Cork Factory more than 10 years ago, calling it an “all but abandoned part of town.”
Now, Dirr pointed out it’s poised to soon add 1,500 new residents from a mix of different developments, including his company’s 365-unit Waterfront Place, which it will build as part of the Buncher Co.’s Riverfront Landing master plan on a site right behind the terminal which McCaffery’s group is working on.
