A Mercer County company becoming an increasingly familiar presence in Pittsburgh is pushing forward with a plan to add what may be the next new multifamily redevelopment along Smallman Street in the Strip District.
Jonathan Hudson, a principal of the family-owned Hudson Cos. based in Hermitage, said the firm is working with Strip District-based Indovina Associates Architects to establish a design to redevelop two industrial properties at 2929 Smallman Street and 6 30th Street into two neighboring apartment buildings with a total of 234 units in them.
Hudson was a guest of the Strip District Neighbors organization at its Town Hall meeting on Wednesday evening and provided a couple renderings for the meeting’s attendees showing what the proposed plan is expected to look like in what is still an early stage plan.
He added Hudson is working to bring the proposal
before the Pittsburgh Planning Commission this
summer on a project designed to be by right in terms of its zoning, thereby not requiring any variances or special exceptions.
The company bought the two buildings in relatively close succession in the last year or so, paying a total of $6.2 million for them both. The second building is the former T&T Metals mill facility at the corner of 30th and Railroad Streets, which totals about 30,000 square feet.
Hudson, whose first investment foray into the
city was in buying the Brix on 26 on the South Side in 2020, is active in the city and region elsewhere right now.
The company announced a few weeks ago that it bought the 476-unit Hyland Hills apartments, a garden-style multifamily community near Banksville Road in the South Hills, paying nearly $20 million.
Hudson also is under construction with its 10-story, 148-unit The Julian project on Melwood Avenue in Oakland.
The company’s diversified business lines – the company does plenty of third-party construction along with investment and development, may bode well for the new Smallman project to go forward.
With the company planning to build its own project at a time of escalating construction costs, Hudson acknowledged, “the integration (of its different businesses) does allow us an advantage over our competitors.
Amid a Smallman Street corridor in which there are multiple residential projects in the planning stages, Hudson expects demand for housing will continue to warrant such new projects.
“In all of the other properties that we currently own and manage, demand has been consistent and occupancy has been stable,” he said.
The renderings Hudson displayed at the Strip District Town Hall of the proposed development includes two six-story buildings in a block of Smallman between the Strip Lofts condominium building at 2901 Smallman and the Crucible Building, the tech flex property formerly occupied by Uber Advanced Technology Group but put up for sublease by the local firm that bought the Uber group, Aurora Innovation.
The Strip District has been booming with new residential development, with Smallman Street generating much of the new activity.
The most recent State of the Strip report compiled by Strip District Neighbors last year tallied ongoing increases in population, apartment rental rates and sale prices.
The population of 2,571 people grew by 233% since 2015, with the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment priced at $1,890, with the median sale price at $831,574, according to the report.