Hazelwood Green project moves on after Amazon HQ2 hype ends
When Mill 19 was built along the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood in 1943, it housed munitions for World War II.
After the war, it became a steel mill.
In the 1970s, it was used to store coke oven bricks.
The possibility for the 178-acre development project called Hazelwood Green to house a modern day e-commerce giant like Amazon would have brought it full circle, said Michael Levenson, director of commercial real estate at Albert Anthony Real Estate.
“The three city sites seemed the most appealing,” Levenson said of the five sites included in Pittsburgh’s Amazon HQ2 proposal, released Thursday. “Hazelwood Green always stuck out as the favorite to me, because the 178-acre vacant site is primed for a development such as what Amazon was interested in locating.”
Proposed plans for moving Amazon’s second headquarters into Hazelwood Green, along with similar suggestions for other sites were included in Pittsburgh’s HQ2 bid. In most cases, the sites would have been offered to Amazon for free while the state covered the cost, public officials said.
The team directing the Hazelwood Green development project had not seen the bid before Thursday, said Rebecca Flora, President and CEO of ReMake Group, LLC.
“We really didn’t review it either,” Flora said Friday. “We’re still fact checking some of the information in it ourselves.”
For example, a rendering of Hazelwood Green included in the proposal does not match their rendering of the project. Flora also disagreed with the valuation of the property and said that they are in the process of doing land valuation themselves.
“I can assure everyone we are not offering land for free,” Flora said.
Hazelwood Green is owned by a partnership between the Heinz Endowments, Richard King Mellon Foundation and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation. The Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania owns 12.6 acres of the site, which includes the Mill 19 building.
Levenson speculated that the former Civic Arena site and properties in the Strip District would have the biggest price tags. The 65-acre Carrie Furance site in Rankin and Swissvale was also part of the offer to Amazon.
Recent property assessments show that the five sites’ land is together worth at least $20 million.
Any of the five sites could easily become mixed-use development with residential, office and retail space, Levenson said, with Hazelwood Green also offering industrial options.
“The wild card of the five sites is Carrie Furnace,” Levenson said. “With no real attractions surrounding it and isolated from main roadways, this site is a blank slate for a developer with a vision to create an out-of-the-box project.”
Development of the Hazelwood Green site will move forward with or without Amazon, Flora said.
He said they’re currently working with smaller-scale tech companies that are interested in the space.
Jamie Martines is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jamie at 724-850-2867, jmartines@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Jamie_Martines.
