By Nate Doughty - Reporter
A technology venture studio looking to spin out local companies as stand-alone entities has taken over a portion of space previously used by the Avenue coworking facility in the historic Paramount Film Exchange Building in Uptown.
Glen Lake Pioneering now occupies about 3,200 square feet of space on the entire second floor of a building that InnovatePGH, an Oakland-based public-private nonprofit partnership organization, previously used for coworking space. As a result, InnovatePGH will now only maintain its coworking operations in the building on its first floor.
According to Pat O'Donnell, a principal at Glen Lake, the multi-year lease the venture studio signed is a testament to Glen Lake's commitment to growing in the neighborhood. He said the company has had smaller locations in East Liberty, Oakland and Lawrenceville, among others, before it moved to Uptown. The proximity to these locations and others was also a crucial selling point for Uptown, he said.
"I've had a chance to be in all of those spaces and they're all fantastic, entrepreneurial centers in their own right," O'Donnell said. "But, I feel like here we're certainly able to get more space in Uptown and really feel like we're a part of something; we're a part of the transformation of the neighborhood."
O'Donnell said he's looking forward to the construction start of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) initiative from Pittsburgh Regional Transit, which will run through Uptown as part of a more streamlined public transportation offering that looks to better connect downtown and Oakland with faster and more reliable service. It's that and the additional housing stock set to come online as well as the new breweries and coffee shops popping up nearby that O'Donnell said he's looking forward to seeing come to fruition the most for the neighborhood.
"We built this business to do something interesting in Pittsburgh and help to contribute to the Pittsburgh ecosystem," O'Donnell said. "Uptown as a neighborhood is such a great opportunity for us to leave our mark on a neighborhood that is up and coming, but it's also being built in a really strategic way to support the local residents of Uptown in addition to connecting the neighborhood to the economic centers of Oakland and downtown."
Sean Luther, president and CEO at InnovatePGH, said he is thrilled to see Glen Lake Pioneering take on the space after InnovatePGH reached the end of its lease for it. Luther said the first-floor co-working space remains busy and is actively being used by several other startup companies throughout the week.
"It's a young team that's really high energy, that's growing, and they specifically wanted to be part of the narrative of Uptown," Luther said of Glen Lake. "As BRT is going into place, as you're seeing 2,000-plus new apartments in the pipeline; they want to grow with the neighborhood. And that's exactly the type of company that I think that neighborhood is looking for.