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Pittsburgh US Steel to build new HQ in city
Photo
This artist rendering provided Monday by United States Steel Corp. depicts a proposed building that the company announced would become its company’s world headquarters in Pittsburgh. The building would be part of the NHL Penguins’ redevelopment of the former Civic Arena site. It would replace the current headquarters in the 64-story U.S. Steel Tower, downtown Pittsburgh’s tallest building.
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH
United States Steel Corp. announced Monday it will build its new world headquarters in Pittsburgh as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the former Civic Arena site by the NHL’s Penguins.
Company, team, local and state officials made the announcement at the Consol Energy Center, the hockey arena that opened in 2010 across the street from the site where a team-controlled subsidiary will break ground in August or September.
Mario Longhi, U.S. Steel chief executive officer, said the new headquarters will open by September 2017, by which time the company’s 50-year lease will expire at the 64-story U.S. Steel Tower downtown, the city’s tallest building.
The new five-story building “will serve as a cornerstone in the revitalization of this community and our company,” Longhi said. It will house U.S. Steel’s 800 headquarters employees for at least 18 years, with an option to extend the lease beyond that.
The plan solves several interlocking problems for U.S. Steel, the Penguins and Pittsburgh.
A New York investment firm bought the skyscraping headquarters building for $250 million in April 2011. A year later, U.S. Steel announced it likely would move out.
What concerned Pittsburghers is whether U.S. Steel would follow Alcoa out of town or greatly reduce its presence, as happened when H.J. Heinz Co. moved production out of the city years before being sold to Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital last year. Heinz headquarters remain in Pittsburgh.
When he took office earlier this year, Mayor Bill Peduto met Longhi and said, “I will not be the mayor that lost U.S. Steel.”
Enter the Penguins, who have been trying to redevelop the former Civic Arena site a few hundred yards up the hill from U.S. Steel’s downtown headquarters, but a world away economically.
The Penguins finally reached a deal in the fall on a $440 million redevelopment plan that will include retail shops, housing and office space on the former arena site. The development will be partially funded by more than $30 million in state grants and a local tax-incentive program that will funnel some development revenue to infrastructure improvements, job training and other programs to benefit the Hill District.