Elmhurst Innovation Center will bring new tech flex office space to South Oakland this spring

Pittsburgh will soon have yet another tech flex office space.

The first building of the Elmhurst Innovation Center at the Pittsburgh Technology Center in South Oakland is set to open for tenants this spring. The 80,000-square-foot space will offer combined space for offices, research and development centers and manufacturing areas that can accommodate companies from a wide range of tech fields, including robotics and life sciences. The second building of the same size has not yet broken ground, but when completed, each building will be able to hold up to four mid-size tenants. Once open later this spring, the first building will offer a shell structure that tenants can customize to meet their work and technological needs.

“It’s got what we call ‘high bay space’ where there’s clearance in the space from 22 to just under 30 feet,” Elmhurst Group Director of Leasing Eric Schindler told Technical.ly. “And then there’s a second level we consider sort of an open space and open flex type space that will overlook the high bay space. And then there’s a third floor, which we are dedicating to office space.”

Situated between Pittsburgh’s top universities and the growing innovation hub at Hazelwood Green, the Elmhurst Innovation Center has neighbors in tech as well, with Hitachi, Braskem and Thermo Fisher Scientific all holding offices down the road. But the biggest appeal of the new space might not be its close neighbors or proximity to innovation resources, but its cost: While office rent prices in the East End are creeping toward $40 per square foot, the Elmhurst team estimates that the new space will be significantly less expensive.

“Of course, it’ll depend on what sort of money we need to invest in the tenant improvement work, but we know we can we can be much more competitive than that,” Schindler said.

The hope is that innovation from Pittsburgh's tech companies can start to happen beyond its signature tech hubs in the Strip District and East Liberty.

The concept for the Elmhurst Innovation Center was launched before the pandemic, though the Elmhurst Group only broke ground on the first building last March. Despite questions about the return of office space at the time, Schindler said the pandemic never really caused the team to doubt the need for a physical space like this. Much of that concern, he said, had to do with vacancies in pure office spaces.

“A portion of this is office space, but truly, this is flex space,” Schindler said. “And it’s a different animal, a different user, and we’re not really competing with pure office users.”

That seems to be the running theme for other office flex spaces that have cropped up in Pittsburgh over the last several months, including Hazelwood Green and Rockwell Park. But even with other commitments to physical space here, like Aurora‘s announcement of Pittsburgh as its permanent and sole headquarters last fall, suggests that the city’s tech expertise lends itself to a need for in-person collaboration. While that’s more intuitive with resource-intensive robotics and life sciences innovation, it’s also the case for companies like Duolingo, which recently announced that it would double its office footprint here as its employees return to in-person work. And this week, the Pittsburgh Innovation District and InnovatePGH announced the expansion of its Avenu coworking spaces in Oakland.

The Elmhurst Innovation Center will make room for even more companies to grow their employee base here, Schindler said. While the space doesn’t have any signed commitments from potential tenants yet, he and others on the team have received a lot of inbound interest and given tours to companies both within and outside of Pittsburgh.

The hope, he said, is that innovation from Pittsburgh’s tech companies can start to happen beyond its signature tech hubs in the Strip District and East Liberty, and ground more neighborhoods in the fastest growing sector of the local economy.