Faros Properties

Objectives
Faros Properties of New York was interested in investing in Pittsburgh, but didn’t really know the market. They initially purchased the Washington Plaza apartments, a 1960s I.M. Pei-designed high-rise near the new arena. Our job was to introduce them to Pittsburgh. They also purchased the Allegheny Center apartments, then the whole massive Allegheny Center complex, including a failed 1960s-era shopping mall, which sat mostly empty in the heart of Pittsburgh’s North Side. They sought to turn 1.2 million-square-foot property into a massive mixed-use high-tech campus, to capitalize on the wave of technology startups coming out of Pittsburgh’s universities.

Insights
To say these properties were tired would be a massive understatement. They were old and poorly maintained. But they also symbolically (and literally) represented all the failures of 1960s urban planning.

In the case of Washington Plaza, it was intended to be one of many high-rises around the state-of-the-art Civic Arena, a cultural hub for the city, the Civic Light Opera, concerts and major league sports. A vibrant, mostly-minority neighborhood, the lower Hill District, was bulldozed to clear land for these developments. But development stopped, and the surrounding land remained acres of asphalt parking lots until this day.

Allegheny Center was an even more tragic case. The center of Allegheny City, once an independent city, was leveled to build a shopping mall, which was deemed a necessary response to mass suburbanization. Its years as a shopping center were short-lived—by the time it was purchased by Faros Properties, it was mostly converted to office space and data centers. Virtually all of its restaurants, shops and amenities had abandoned the space, and confusing auto-centric road patterns kept it isolated from the rest of the historic, improving North Side.

Groundwork
We set up private meetings with Mayor Bill Peduto, the County Executive, the head of Visit Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, and many others.

For the first press conference, we turned to another client, the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, who offered the use of their beautiful lobby and catering (for free). We created all the press materials to announce the acquisition, and personally invited each member of the media.

Strategy
One problem arose, however—the mayor’s spokesman said that he was too busy to attend. Personal connections paved the way forward, though; it just so happened that Saul had a hockey game coming up, against the Mayor’s team. After the game, he told the mayor, telling him, “These are people you need to meet.”  

The mayor told him to send the details to his personal email. He decided to attend the press conference.

Faros invested several hundred million dollars into this property, now named Nova Place, making it one of the largest urban redevelopment projects in America in 2015. So far, it has drawn tenants ranging from Bank of America to Radiant Hall (a shared studio space for artists), to La Prima, a local coffee roaster.

We found all sorts of ways for Nova Place to connect with the neighboring community, and the city. We arranged to co-host the Maker Faire with the Children’s Museum (another Markowitz client) next door, which drew hundreds of creative “makers”—artists, designers, builders, programmers--and their kids to the space.

One of Nova Place’s key elements is a collaborative workspace called Alloy 26. Run by a former manager for Google, Alloy 26 is 50,000 feet of co-working space—the largest in the region--with members ranging from robotics and cloud-computing startups, to a designer of high-tech shaving razors. Target, the giant retailer, has a Data Science & Engineering office there as well.

We know Pittsburgh better than anybody, and know how to pitch this quintessentially Pittsburgh story of post-industrial rebirth.

We built a PR campaign that capitalized on our deep knowledge of local media, and familiarity with this long-dormant local landmark, finally getting new life.

Faros Properties would go on to invest more than $250 million in Pittsburgh.