Walnut Capital brought plans before the city’s Planning Commission today for what it’s calling Bakery Square Refresh. The Refresh project involves the demolition of the small retail building on the outparcel on Penn Avenue and construction of a two-story, 12,400 square foot retail building that will connect to the original Nabisco bakery. The $5 million Refresh is being designed by Strada Architecture and PJ Dick is the contractor. According to Walnut’s CEO, Gregg Perelman, the new construction – which will be home to several restaurants – is to be ready next October when Phillips occupies its new space in Bakery Square Three. That means construction will start around the first of the year.
Around the corner from Bakery Square, Echo Realty is moving forward with its Shady Hill Center. The project involves 220 units of apartments, to be developed by Greystone Real Estate Partners, a 500-car parking garage, and the replacement of the Giant Eagle with a new 37,000 square foot store. Carl Walker Construction has been selected to build the parking garage.
Data on employment and unemployment was released on the national and regional level within the past week. The job creation data for Pittsburgh showed modest improvement, with 5,500 more jobs in August 2019 than one year before. Unemployment fell by 0.3 points to 3.9%. The good news inside the Pittsburgh metro data, which came from PA’s Department of Labor, was the net growth of employment. The workforce grew by 18,400 from August-to-August, while the number of unemployed fell by 1,000. Retiring Baby Boomers are putting great downward pressure on the workforce supply in Pittsburgh. That the number of people working grew by more than 1.5 percent suggests that the gains in employment are offsetting the demographics for now.
US job growth was better in September than in previous months, according to the Census Bureau’s report on October 4. There were 136,000 new jobs in September. Estimates for July and August were also revised upward by nearly 60,000 jobs. The headwinds on the economy are certainly growing, but US employers are still adding to payrolls.