The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. announced this week that it plans to construct a 40-story headquarters building dubbed The Tower at PNC Plaza on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street in Pittsburgh, PA. Once complete in 2015, the 800,000-square-foot, $400 million building at the same intersection where PNC has been headquartered for more than 150 years will serve as the company’s executive offices.
Tentative plans call for about 300 underground parking spaces, street-level retail and green rooftops. The tower should create 2,500 construction jobs, with 500 workers at a time on the site during peak periods.
PNC subsidiaries have acquired six properties totaling about 31,000 square feet on the site bounded by Fifth and Forbes avenues and Wood Street. The financial services firm will seek to acquire three other parcels totaling about 6,000 square feet from the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh. Demolition of existing buildings on the site is expected to begin late this year, with the three-year construction projects scheduled to begin in the spring of 2012. PNC will seek community input on street-level design and other aspects of the project in coming months.
PNC will own the building and occupy all of the
office space, with tenants in the retail spaces at street level. The current headquarters building, One PNC Plaza, will continue to house PNC offices.
The project will feature a double glass facade to reduce cooling costs, a high-efficiency heating and cooling system and day lighted workspaces. The design team is also currently exploring fuel cells, solar panels, geothermal systems and other alternative power generation sources, and the building’s green rooftops will collect rainwater and channel it for use in other parts of the structure.
When the tower is complete, PNC will have invested more than $700 million in green buildings in the heart of the city, said chairman and chief executive officer James E. Rohr, who termed the development "an exclamation point on our investment in downtown Pittsburgh."
PNC, one of the world’s leaders in newly constructed LEED-certified buildings, recently completed its latest green office building in Washington, D.C., the LEED Platinum certified PNC Place at 800 17th Street, PNC’s regional headquarters a few blocks from the White House.
In 2000 when PNC opened its first green building, the 650,000-square-foot PNC Firstside Center on Pittsburgh’s First Avenue, it was the largest LEED-certified building in the world. Last year, PNC opened Three PNC Plaza, on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh, one of the largest LEED-certified mixed-use buildings in the U.S.
The project is being designed by the Pittsburgh office of Gensler, the world’s largest architectural and design firm and the designer for both Three PNC Plaza and PNC Place. Pittsburgh-based PJ Dick will serve as construction manager and U.K.-based Buro Happold will be the engineering firm. Paladino & Company of Seattle serves as the green building consultant.
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