Area Development
Carnegie Mellon University and the Regional Industrial Development Corporation broke ground on a $250 million advanced manufacturing facility at the Hazelwood Green property in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

RIDC acquired the 190,000 square foot Mill 19 building, situated on 12.5 acres at the former Hazelwood Coke Works plant, from the Almono Partnership.

As part of an agreement between Carnegie Mellon and the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, the university has agreed to lease two floors of a new 94,000-square-foot building. The new building will be constructed entirely within the historic steel mill known as Mill 19, located on the Hazelwood Green development site.

The Carnegie Mellon facility will house research, development, and office space for the nonprofit Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute, a $250-million public-private collaborative catalyzed by CMU that puts new technologies to work for industry, and for CMU’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative (MFI), an interdisciplinary research initiative. The initiatives will make the facility an advanced manufacturing hub and bring together large-scale academic research and corporate development under one roof.

In recent years, the Hazelwood Green development site received state support in the form of funding from the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority, the Industrial Sites Reuse Program, the Business in Our Sites program, and the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.

“Under the leadership of Governor Wolf, new opportunities are rising all over the commonwealth through our strategic partnerships aimed at rebuilding our communities and the transformation of this former brownfield site will continue this momentum,” Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) Secretary Dennis Davin said. “This development can help propel us to the top of the global manufacturing industry. As the technologies and methods developed here are utilized by American industry, Hazelwood Green will become synonymous with cutting-edge manufacturing, the technologies it is built upon, and the new jobs it creates.”

“Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, materials science and 3-D printing are rapidly transforming manufacturing, with the power to trigger a significant resurgence of this economic pillar in the United States, and in Pittsburgh in particular,” said Farnam Jahanian, Interim President of Carnegie Mellon University. “CMU’s global leadership in research and in catalyzing economic development brings us to the cusp of a historic shift in manufacturing.”