Pittsburgh is no longer a sooty steel town, but more the cosmos of wealth and creativity exemplified by its Carnegie and Warhol museums. City fathers are remaking the heavily industrialized blue-collar Steel City into a white-collar community. Renovations and new developments are so common that Pittsburgh is today’s version of the phoenix rising from the ashes — and nowhere is this more apparent than at SouthSide Works.

The Cheesecake Factory Restaurant is opening its first Pittsburgh location at SouthSide Works.

“This is a true lifestyle city on a brownfield site,” says Damian Soffer, local SouthSide Works developer and chief executive officer of the 42-year-old Monroeville, Pennsylvania-based Soffer Organization.

The 34-acre SouthSide Works, built on the ashes of an old steel mill, is part of a 123-acre design that the Soffer Organization is developing. Already in place are the Pittsburgh Steelers/Pitt Panther training facility, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s (UPMC) Sports Performance Center and much of Phase One of SouthSide Works.

Soffer anticipates a ribbon-cutting ceremony for SouthSide Works on September 17, when 75 percent of the first phase will be complete and 40 percent of its shops will be open. The finished lifestyle project will include 8,000 square feet of office space, 4,050 square feet of retail space, a 10-screen stadium-seating theater, 84 lofts and flats with 27 different floor plans, and ultimately, 170 riverfront condominiums.

“I think this is what the public wants,” Soffer says. “We’re bringing back the sense of community. We’re giving back a sense of place. Our assets today are not the industrial ones of old. Today, there are two great universities (Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh) that are manufacturing great minds. The biotech and technical industries will probably be our future.”

Along with the city of Pittsburgh, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh and the strong support of Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, the Soffer Organization got the ball rolling. The concept was introduced 7 years ago, and according to Soffer, took a while to reach fruition because of lengthy dealings with state and city bureaucracies.

The $300 million project “is a true public/private partnership,” he says. “The city has never done anything like this.”

Pittsburgh’s redesign is in part due to the city’s communal cry to bring its children home. Soffer, a multi-lingual world voyager who lived in Europe for 12 years, can relate. “Kids were not staying here, because there was nothing for them to do in Pittsburgh,” he says. So the city’s prodigal son is offering them entertainment and a young, dynamic cosmos.

His lifestyle development, located between 26th and Hot Metal streets, extends from East Carson Street, which will soon be expanded, to the Monongahela River. It seamlessly connects to Pittsburgh’s South Side, where the young and young at heart have been flocking for years, to the funky mishmash of boutiques, coffee houses, clubs, restaurants, tattoo parlors and avant-garde curiosities. Soffer plans to keep the area funky — in an upscale kind of way.

The open-air lifestyle center includes merchants new to Pittsburgh such as The Cheesecake Factory Restaurant, The Claddagh Irish Pub, Nectar, Z Gallerie, REI, Urban Outfitters and McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant, with more to come. SouthSide Works will also house the first Carnegie/Warhol Museum retail store.

The Cheese Cake Factory, which will seat 400, opens August 17; it is adjacent to SouthSide Works’ Town Square, which features an Italian kiosk and a 36-jet dancing fountain, which is the hub from which activities radiate. A business class, 200-room all-glass hotel with 50,000 square feet of fitness facilities and conference rooms will be a comfortable stroll away, as is the cinema, which is expected to open this September, with its glamorous two-story lobby reminiscent of theaters from the past. Three of its 10 screens, located on the second floor, will be devoted to foreign and American art films. Below the cinemas are restaurants and retailers, which will also be scattered below the mini-town’s flats and lofts.

Many will dine al fresco in one of SouthSide Works’ 12 restaurants, where planners require outdoor café space and 17-foot-wide sidewalks. A gourmet market will ultimately be in place and a projected 400-seat outdoor pavilion overlooking the river will provide free events and public performances, says Soffer, who sits on numerous cultural and civic boards.

“This development was designed in part to keep young adults here,” Soffer explains. “We’re trying to give them the café society that is in Europe.”

He adds, “We are helping downtown Pittsburgh by bringing more people into the area.”

Visitors to the destination location can ultimately board water taxis from Pittsburgh’s two new stadiums or captain boats on the Monongahela River into one of 100-plus slips at an adjacent marina. Or they can arrive by crossing the Hot Metal Bridge that provides direct access to eight colleges and universities with approximately 70,000 students and 15,000 faculty members within a 5-mile radius. Within 10 miles of the SouthSide Works are 514,229 residents whose average income was $56,530 in 2003, according to Sites USA. Cars will be parked in one of six three-story parking garages that Soffer says will not destroy the area’s aesthetics of landscaped courtyards, reflecting pools, and fountains designed in accordance with Soffer’s standards of perfection, which include flowers and greenery covering outside transformers.

Construction continues at the site, but the 45,000 square feet of loft living space is already 50 percent rented, mostly by young professionals. Continental Communities is also constructing 250 rental apartments next to the development.

Some residents work within walking distance of their homes. UPMC has been leasing Soffer’s 152,000-square-foot Quantum One office building since early 2002. Expected to be filled by year’s end is the 180,000-square-foot Quantum Two. Also in place on East Carson Street is the Hot Metal Grille, which opened last year, along with H&R Block and the soon-to-open Citizens Bank. Qdoba Mexican Grill will also open its second Pittsburgh location there. Across the way is the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers building and, down the street, the FBI regional office.

SouthSide Works was created by Baltimore-based Development Design Group, which helped design Easton Town Center near Columbus, Ohio and Miami’s CocoWalk. Additional architects were employed to keep SouthSide Works true to the old neighborhood, building the new like it’s been there before, down to the signage, lighting and red-brick constructions. Among them are Design 3 Architects, IKM Architects and Davis Gardner Gannon Pope Architecture. SouthSide Work’s contractors are primarily PJ Dick and Jendoco Construction.

©2004 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.