Nova Place in Pittsburgh Announces 100K+ Square Feet of New & Expanded Leases – CBRE

Faros Properties and CBRE have secured more than 100,000 square feet of new and expanded leases at Nova Place, a 32-acre urban redevelopment in Pittsburgh’s North Side with 1.2 million square feet of first-class office space, since the beginning of 2023.

Additionally, the campus’s Nova Tower 1 – an eight-story, 150,000-square-foot office building – has reached 100% occupancy.

CBRE’s Jeremy Kronman and Andrew Miller represented Faros Properties in lease negotiations.

Recent activity includes new leases and lease expansions from S&B USA Construction, Everest Infrastructure Partners, WWR, Throughcare and NSABP Foundation Inc. S&B has committed to approximately 40,000 square feet on the 8th and 9th floors of Nova Tower 2 and will occupy the space in the fourth quarter of 2023. Everest has leased the entire 10th floor of Nova Tower 2 and will move into the space in early 2024.

“Everest has been very pleased with Nova Place since moving to the campus in 2019,” said Matt Newton, CEO of Everest Infrastructure Partners. “We have seen growth of nearly 400% as we rapidly approach 100 total employees, the majority of whom are based here in Nova Place.”

“It’s not as unusual for office-using firms to take more space right now,” said CBRE’s Kronman. “Companies who are bringing their people together in amenity-rich environments have continued to hire, acquire and expand.”

While presently full, Nova Tower 1 is expected to see some space become available in early 2024, which Faros Properties plans to speculatively renovate into move-in ready suites ranging from 2,000 to 8,000 square feet. The lobbies of Nova Tower 1 and Nova Tower 2 are also being updated later this year.

“Nova Place keeps running out of move-in ready space. We’ve relocated the Faros Construction office three times in the last year because we continually found a rent-paying tenant to come in and displace them,” said CBRE’s Miller. “We find ourselves touring occupied spaces and quietly telling prospective tenants the suite may or may not be available when they need to move.”

Faros Properties has been making additional improvements to the Nova Place Concourse building to attract more quasi-office occupiers to the campus. This building is home to many of Pittsburgh’s most important robotics, wet lab, and data center facilities. NAIOP Pittsburgh named it the Tech Flex Renovation of the Year for the building’s Gecko Robotics and Castle Biosciences spaces.

“We’re really excited about what the future holds for Nova Place,” said Brad Ott, Vice President of Development at Faros Properties. “We own and operate properties along the entire East Coast at this point, and many of our investments have targeted innovation-rich areas. We’ve never seen anything like the tenant mix at Nova Place.”