Crimson and Gold Connection; Shawn Naccarato

Welcome to Crimson Goal Connection. I am Dustin Tribor and today's guest is Sean Nakarato and he is going to speak with us today about the Block 22 project. Sean welcome. Hey thank you very much Dustin. It's nice to be here. Well please tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll kind of go into this new project that's going to be improving Pittsburgh State University. My role here at the institution is government community relations as well as I serve as the executive director for our Center for Innovation and Business Development and what that means and I sort of I guess a shortened format because it is the longest title on campus I'm afraid. What that means is that I'm responsible for from the door set to DC representing Pittsburgh State University and building relationships and then also I have the honor of heading our economic engagement economic development activities for the institution. Block 22 project is incredibly exciting project and not just about improving Pittsburgh State University. I mean this is really about revitalizing downtown Pittsburgh. This is about that sort of shot of adrenaline into the downtown area and what we hope is that in addition to the offerings that it will allow or the things that the access that it will give to our students as far as

the transformative experiences they might have it's about transformative experience for our community and I think Dustin is your well aware and most of your listeners are as well. As an institution we are focused on and our mission is to provide transformative experiences for our students and for our community and I think that's one of the most important first points to make is that and for our community is a very important part that it's not just about the student for the four to five six years that they're here it's actually for the community for generations and so in my role for the institution I've had the fortune for the last six years or so to six or seven years to be in a position where and I'm on the front line of helping us to deliberately and diligently cultivate that relationship with the city with the community to build those ties and and now having formalized role in helping to advance the economy and so the block 22 project itself I think is just one piece of a broader Pittsburgh Renaissance it's occurring right now and I think you see greater alignment between the university and the city and this project is a great physical manifestation of that. The downtown project it's going to

encompass four historic buildings that most of your listeners will recognize as the national bank building the curl building and the backstreet building which is a small building between the crawl building and the colonial fox theater and the what I'm not sure if it actually has a sort of a colloquial name but it was originally the opera house hotel which is just north of the national bank building and so what we're going to be seeing here is the revitalization and renovation of these four historic buildings and I think one of the most important things to point out about those four buildings is those four buildings in that corner and fourth and Broadway in Pittsburgh was the historic heart and soul and beginning of commercial business in Pittsburgh, Kansas and so those four buildings were all built around the turn of the century they were built between I guess it would have been 1876 and 1906 somewhere in that neighborhood and so what we're talking about is preserving saving and sort of jumpstarting those things and creating this thriving center

of town that was there 100 years ago you know 100 plus years ago the turn of the century a lot of people don't know this but and I think it's a surprise for most folks to hear this but at the turn of the 20th century Crawford County was the richest per capita county in the nation. Wow these buildings have been virtually vacant for for way too long we're talking probably a generation or two virtually almost entirely vacant and the city's been trying really diligently to find a way to redevelop those and it's just it's expensive it's tough to do and the there's a guy who works for a development company called Visino, his name's Matt Burton, Matt grew up in this area, he's the St. Mary's Colgan graduate, Pittsburgh State University graduate, he happened to about six months six or eight months before the connection occurred where we talked to him he started working for this developer called the Visino Group and they met Becky Gray who's the director of community and housing development for the city met his company at a conference and it turns out there's a guy that works this

guy works for them and he has a Pittsburgh connection and what we know about people who have that connection is they care about the place they came from they want to advance it and all of a sudden we had opportunity then to say we're going to look past just what most developers look at are just dollars and cents and say okay what if we got the university involved and that's how this happened and so is that partnership and us saying yeah we're you know the notion of having housing student housing downtown is kind of a cool idea. So this is going to be businesses below housing's above in the buildings and really a hot spot for college students just all people around come down hang out entrepreneurs to start businesses and really be the hub of just meeting as it used to be you know 100 years ago. Yeah you know I'm a big I'm a big believer in the notion of creating spaces where in people convene you know creating spaces where in people collide or convene or whatever term you want to use but I believe you create the right sort of space with the right kind of things around those folks than almost anything's possible. We one of the driving forces for this is something we've kind of now abbreviated into ACT or act but it's art

commerce and technology and so what we're really trying to do is build a convening spot a collision space of a space wherein people that are in students or community members who are who are adaptor interested in art business and technology areas to get together and and create and I think if you look at all the great companies in the world at root you might have had a kitchen table you had someone who had some proficiency in business technology and art got together and those three people that's the key and so that's what we're trying to to create there and as you alluded to the space 100 we're looking at about 105 student housing units those units will occupy the upper floors of each of the four buildings the first floors will be reserved for loosely we'll call it commercial space on the on the west or on the east side of the street the national bank building in the formerly upper house hotel there'll be about 18,000 square feet on the first floor of those that will house innovation space so a hacker maker space which all that really means is a place where people can go it's kind of like a

technology studio where people can go and we'll have some membership options for people to go in and that's where they can create things so prototyping 3D printers different sorts of software packages are available some some CNC and laser cutting machines and that kind of thing but the rest of the space will be for a student-based incubator we'll also have some co-working space we'll have a coffee shop root coffee house actually is going to be moving down into that space and then in the old the old space that was the upper house hotel that'll be primarily occupied by a big chunk of my team which is center for innovation business development so all of those folks who do who for the university do counseling services for startups for entrepreneurs for business expansion will be there and then on the west side of the street in the old commerce and backstreet buildings we're looking we're actually right now working with the developer to identify the right kind of commercial mix it's going to be there but it'll be commercial tenants and it probably my guess is there'll be some food related aspect there yeah yeah gotta feed the people and this is going to be open roughly we're looking at we're looking at construction to begin sometime next

month in February about a 16-month construction window so we're hoping to be open our our target is summer of 2018 sounds like a great project Sean Nakarato thank you so much again for coming in and speaking with us on crimson and gold connection