U-Haul moving storage facility, warehouse into Lower Burrell
After being vacant for nearly 16 years, the shuttered department store known as the Montgomery Ward building in Lower Burrell has a new owner and corporate tenant.
Arizona-based truck rental and storage company U-Haul has purchased half of the building that Ward and J.C. Penney once occupied, and planned to open a showroom by this week, said Ean Livingood, marketing company president with U-Haul Co. of Northwestern Pennsylvania.
The building is in part of Burrell Plaza, near the intersection of Leechburg and Wildlife Lodge roads.
“We're very excited to become part of the Lower Burrell community,” Livingood said.
According to information provided to Lower Burrell's planning board, the new business will include a 3,000-square-foot retail and showroom area, a 15,000-square-foot general warehouse and almost 70,000 square feet of climate-controlled self-storage units.
Plans do not include demolition of the old building, but the roof, facade and parking lot are slated to be replaced.
The showroom will open long before the rest of the business, according to Livingood, because interior renovations and installation of the storage units will take some time.
“We'll probably have our grand opening within the next eight months to a year,” he said, but the showroom was to be open and renting trucks and selling boxes by this week.
Hitch installation services will be offered “soon,” Livingood said.
Livingood said the facility eventually could become a U-Haul “hub,” the center of the company's regional operations.
As it stands now, Livingood said the communities this facility will serve — New Kensington, Arnold, Upper Burrell and Lower Burrell — don't have many other nearby options when it comes to self moving.
“We're looking forward to serving those communities and I'm sure they will take care of us,” he said.
Lower Burrell Mayor Richard Callender described the sale of the building as something that's been “a long time coming.”
“Having U-Haul in there is a spark for having other developers come in and open other new businesses,” Callender said.
Callender said former Mayor Don Kinosz worked tirelessly to find a business to buy the property, even after he was no longer in office.
“There have been a lot of people that had their hands in the making of this and we as a city really appreciate everything everyone has done,” Callender said.
The new U-Haul facility, formerly owned by Widewaters Lower Burrell Co. of Syracuse, N.Y., is part of a larger structure. The property on which it sits, once a single lot, has been subdivided into three lots and the former Ward building and its lot were sold to U-Haul.
The other side of the building will be maintained as Widewaters' property.
U-Haul already has sought out a list of local contractors it plans to use for the construction phases, according to Callender. The business, once completed, should employ between 10 and 20 people full-time.
Callender said the sale of the Ward building has made a sale of the adjoining property more feasible.
“I've already reached out to some developers who thought the whole building was just too big. With half of it sold, the J.C. Penney's side is much more attractive to buyers,” he said.
The Montgomery Ward building has been vacant since 2001, when the company went out of business. The adjoining building has been empty since 2005, when J.C. Penney moved to the Pittsburgh Mills mall in Frazer; that was less than a year after Widewaters bought the plaza.
Kinosz had been working to redevelop the 28-acre property since J.C. Penney's departure left the large building vacant.
Matthew Medsger is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-226-4675, mmedsger@tribweb.com or via Twitter @matthew_medsger.
